


Bingo and Black Cats

by gelishan



Category: Firefly, Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-17
Updated: 2011-06-19
Packaged: 2017-10-20 12:01:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 26,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/212569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gelishan/pseuds/gelishan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Dr. Rodney McKay suffers from hallucinations, Bingo is not metaphorical, and on Tuesdays everything goes wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> It took a village.
> 
> Thank you:  
> To [Cyri](http://bmouse.livejournal.com) for helping me brainstorm the concept and cowriting some of the beginning. Special thanks to [Sineala](http://archiveofourown.org/users/sineala/works) for being a near-superhuman cheerleader and sounding-board, for infinite plot details, for being my main audience for like a year, and for keeping me from rending my hair in despair. To Mac, Emily, [trinaest](http://archiveofourown.org/users/trinaest/works), and [Ivy](http://archiveofourown.org/users/ivyblossom/works) for helping me slog through that impossible chunk. To [Emprint](http://emprint.livejournal.com) for making my technobabble less cringeworthy and for making me funnier. To every one of the irregulars of #innercircle for inspiring by example and by encouragement. I could absolutely not have gotten this done without you: you’re amazing and I owe you a million.
> 
> And thank you to anyone nerdy enough to read this. Especially if you catch the Wormhole X-Treme tribute.

When he woke up, Rodney's Spidey sense told him today was going to be a disaster.

Certain members of his team called him paranoid or pessimistic when he said things like that, but everyone had their strengths. His Spidey sense wasn’t as useful or as focused as Teyla's, but it was good at predicting upcoming doom. He even mentioned the upcoming disaster to Wilson, the AOA’s weaksauce replacement for Heightmeyer, at breakfast. Usually he didn't talk to doctors when he didn't have to, he loved Jennifer but the doctors on Atlantis respected patient confidentiality about as much as Kolya cared about the ethical treatment of animals. But today he'd wanted someone to maybe order him a nice, cozy psychiatric leave so he could avoid whatever was coming. Instead, Wilson had sat there and munched on her whatever passed for an English muffin around here and asked about his _medication dosages._ Like you could medicate disaster away.

She'd also looked annoyed, which wasn't unprecedented but was so unprofessional that he briefly wondered about the indigenous flour the cooks were experimenting with. The Athosians had assured Atlantis that the grain it came from was 'healthful and nutritious,' but sometimes they had strange ideas of what constituted healthful, like the time they'd okayed the herb with the mild hallucinogenic properties.

Rodney had avoided the observation lab for _weeks_ after that. Not to mention all forms of shellfish.

When he voiced his concern about the flour, though, she'd turned her head away and muttered something about a coffee shortage, which made a frightening amount of sense and also cemented in Rodney's mind that today was _absolutely doomed._

So without a doctor's note he'd gone on to work and braced himself for what was coming as best he could. He'd even grabbed one of his zealously hoarded chocolate bars in the vain hope that it had enough caffeine to stave off the headache. At the very least it would stave off hypoglycemia.

"Good morning, Rodney," said Radek Zelenka, in an obnoxiously cheerful voice.

'"Anf br rrn smsn hrff mfffn."

"Pardon?" responded Zelenka.

Rodney swallowed and wiped the chocolate smear from his mouth. "And you've rerun the simulation on the hyperspace modulator again?"

Zelenka sighed, and his whole expression changed. In fact, to Rodney's eye he looked a lot more exasperated than he should-- just like Wilson. _Oh shit._ He reflexively clutched his precious chocolate a little closer.

"Prime," said Zelenka.

Now Rodney was confused, which was practically unprecedented. "Excuse me?"

"You have asked me that question ninety-seven times in the last twenty-three hours. Maybe next time you will give me a harder one."

"Oh ha ha. I think I am going to run that simulation myself." Rodney took a sullen bite of his chocolate and fervently wished for coffee. He needed coffee if he was going to have to deal with incompetence as well as disaster.

"Again?"

"Well," he said, punching a few calculations into his tablet, "the last time you were overseeing repairs I wound up six thousand feet below sea level."

"Do not take this as opportunity for more gloating, Rodney, but you are responsible for most of the new hyperdrive design. It is not repairs.”

“But--”

“Even if it were,” Zelenka continued, “how many months has it been since the underwater jumper bay began malfunctioning? Is that not your responsibility?"

Oh, that was so not on. "I needed time to determine the extent of the repairs, unlike certain overly revered scientists who just dash together whatever they think might work."

"Oh, and of course the best way to determine the extent of repairs was to race cars with Colonel Sheppard." Zelenka trailed off into a stream of Czech that Rodney privately always assumed was something along the lines of "Your mother was a hamster and your father smelled of elderberries."

"Hey, buddy, we ready to go?"

The tablet shook in Rodney's hands from his _perfectly understandable_ startle response to the Colonel sneaking up on him yet again. A few months ago during the unfortunate episode with the hallucinogenic herbs, Rodney had asked him to cut it out with the slinking and the stalking and the always being around when Rodney least expected him, because he couldn't _concentrate_ when that kept happening, and it just wasn't nice, and Sam the Whale completely agreed with him. Luckily, Sheppard had just looked bewildered, then concerned, then amused as Rodney vomited into the water.

During breakfast the next day, which astonishingly managed to top out the morning after Amber Cogsworth for sheer humiliation, Sheppard had actually addressed his ill-advised outburst instead of letting it sink into the Atlantean sea. Sheppard had explained in small idiot words that no, he wasn't going to stop having 10 years of military experience including stealth training anytime soon, but Rodney could stop worrying about it.

In fact, Sheppard was going to give him some incentive. And Rodney was going to give him some ice cream as a reward. And that was the ignominious beginning of Rodney Bingo, complete with playing cards and with ice cream as stakes. It was completely unfair because it wasn't like you could just buy ice cream on Atlantis. You had to steal dairy products and sugar from the kitchen stores and you needed to steal the liquid nitrogen Jennifer used in the sickbay to freeze off people's genital warts, and he really tried to avoid thinking about that every single day.

The rules were: one square for John startling him. One square for forgetting someone's birthday. One for hand-waving, one for looking stupid over Jennifer, one square for a failed experiment, one square for a successful experiment (“Oh, that is just not fair,” Rodney had protested, “you can’t have a bingo card for all possible consequences of me _doing my job_ ”), one square for complaining about Sheppard being too friendly to the natives (he _always was_ ), one square for getting shot at. "But when they hit you," Sheppard said solemnly, "I'll get _you_ ice cream."

"Shouldn't that be 'if?'"

Sheppard just grinned.

Never one to back down from a challenge, Rodney had responded with a Sheppard Bingo card of his very own. When he tried to fill in squares for "Being Kirk" or "Leaning on things too much," though, Sheppard argued with him.

So in order to keep Sheppard from making him steal his girlfriend's medical equipment, or worse, thinking he was right, Rodney turned his startled fumble into hanging the tablet back up on the wall. He was pretty sure it looked smooth. "Are we ready? Well, barring.... that is to say...." He glanced at the simulation readouts suspiciously: green, green, green. "I suppose so."

Sheppard hoisted his gun in a quick, fluid movement that _did_ look smooth, damn him. Rodney would envy him if he didn't always have much more important things to worry about. "Good. Time to fly."

"Yes, yes, please take him out of here," said Zelenka, and Rodney barely had time to shoot him an outraged look on the way out. He was damned if he'd let Sheppard fly his experiment without him.

As usual, Rodney did his level best not to stare at John's back on the way through the hallway. It was completely ridiculous, he'd always hypothesized that if he were to have a sudden gay epiphany (it was the Pegasus galaxy, he had to be prepared for every contingency) that he'd suddenly find himself entranced by other men's, oh, pectoral muscles, or hair, or, well, he'd guessed that as a gay man he'd have to be an ass man. But instead he was feeling guilty about looking at John's stupid droopy back with tac gear hanging off it like a Dali clock, because John deserved better than that sort of superficial drooling.

So instead Rodney focused on the destination instead of the journey like his mom had always yelled at him for doing. The jumper, from what he could see, looked almost pretty in the sunlight filtering through the tower's ceiling cutouts, or at least looked a little less like an alien pipe bomb than usual. When Sheppard stopped by the bay doors, the sunlight from the windows played across his ridiculous hair like the lights on the HUD.

It said something hideous about Rodney's mental state that it took him _thinking about the pretty sunlight_ to make him realize that it was illuminating an increasingly weird look on Sheppard's face.

"What?" Rodney said uncomfortably. Today couldn't be the day that Sheppard finally noticed him staring. Today could not possibly be _that_ doomed.

"We _are_ meeting Teyla and Ronon at the bay, right?"

"Oh." _This better not count for the forgetting a birthday square._ "Um."

Sheppard... leaned back a few inches and did that squint and lip-curl thing that wouldn't look disapproving on anyone else and definitely should not make Rodney feel like a nervous twelve-year-old being questioned by the federal government all over again. "Rodney."

"Well excuse me for doing some last-minute safety checks before testing a potentially volatile hyperdrive modification!" The guilty flood was accompanied by his usual expressive gesturing, which he noticed too late to still them unnoticed. At this rate he'd owe Sheppard ice cream once a week.

"So you forgot."

"Yes, well." Hopefully the possibility of being one step closer to ice-cream would mollify Sheppard a little. "Anyway, Teyla's having her Athosian annual review or whatever, she'll probably be drinking tea all day."

Sheppard rolled his eyes in what Rodney pretended was a forgiving way and headed into the jumper.

The HUD lit up excitedly as usual when Sheppard sank into the control chair. Rodney watched as Sheppard closed his eyes, hands dancing over the controls, and felt himself flush despite himself.

"You know, it's downright disturbing how much you enjoy that."

That provoked a reaction, but not one that made him any less distracted-- Sheppard spun around in the chair like a cross between a Bond villain and a six-year-old on a sugar high. "What?"

"Never mind." Rodney sank into his own chair. "Seriously, never mind," at the look Sheppard gave him, tapping his fingers against the table for emphasis and accidentally flipping on the comm in the process. Oh well, it was about time for check-in anyway. He cleared his throat. "Atlantis, do you copy?"

"I am here, Rodney." The signal was fairly decent, but Zelenka's voice crackled and hissed on the last word, and Rodney bit back another comment about the quality of the repairs Zelenka had made. He'd save it for later, after he was out of Zelenka's evil and metaphorical clutches. "Your simulations are still taking up three of my laptops, let us make this quick, yes?"

"Yes. yes. Has the Daedalus reached the rendezvous point?"

Zelenka sighed, or maybe that was just another radio crackle. "There are playing cards in the rear compartment, please keep yourself entertained."

"Cards are for morons who don’t understand how to calculate probabilities."

Yet another sigh-- maybe he should start a Zelenka Bingo, except every square would say ‘sigh’ on it and it would take him a matter of minutes to finish a round. "The Daedalus will be reaching the designated rendezvous point in four point two minutes, Rodney. Your estimated travel time in hyperspace will still be six point three minutes. Can you please be content?"

"No." But the tablet still said green, green, green, so Rodney didn't have any further excuse to delay. "Fine, OK, Colonel, take her into hyperspace."

"With that kind of enthusiasm, I can't wait," Sheppard deadpanned, but he did punch the jumper's drive. It burst into life with an easily audible rattle and hum, which was completely not supposed to happen and once the test was concluded Rodney was going to recheck the jumper's shield resonance frequency.

Then the sky forty yards in front of them cracked into a beautiful, perfect orange hyperspace window. Rodney leaned forward, smiling eagerly despite himself-- this was his favorite part of the process, watching months of theory and scribbling equations and arguing with less brilliant scientists coalesce into a single point of light. _Good size... power readings look good..._

Then an obvious outlier finally caught up with the rest of his calculations. _The_ orange _hyperspace window?_

".....wait!.....increased entropy...." Radek's voice echoed tinnily in his ears, as if from an ever-increasing distance.

"Radek? Radek!" The crackling of the radio was louder now: too loud. "Colonel, stop the jumper!"

The window began to collapse, vaccum rocketing them forward into the epicenter. Rodney caught a last glimpse of Sheppard, mouth moving soundlessly in the glaring orange light flooding the cabin. But honestly, through the dread, Rodney felt a little triumphant. His Spidey sense was still never, ever wrong.


	2. Chapter 2

Rodney played games with higher mathematics all the time. Prime / Not Prime was just the easiest, and the one he could play with other people. But he'd forgotten that when you add insult and indignity, cold water splashes you in the face.

"Wake up.”

When Rodney cracked open one eye, he decided that he had a concussion again. For one thing, he was wet, which in his experience was a pretty good warning sign. Secondly, his head was pounding and he was woozy and even caffeine withdrawal wasn't enough to cause a headache this massive. It was worse than a migraine, he hadn't even escaped the glowy aura hanging over everything--it was like his skull was a giant iceberg and the Titanic had just set sail. And third of all, he was using ordinal lists incorrectly and his metaphors were both bad and mixed.

Lastly, and most importantly, there was a cowboy standing over Rodney, pointing an old-fashioned rifle at his head. There was no way that wasn't a hallucination.

"Now what brings you to this fine boat so close to Alliance space?" said the cowboy. Well, he had the twang right, though the voice wasn't as deep as you'd expect from a tribute to every game of Cowboys and Indians he'd ever not actually played as a kid. He also sounded a lot angrier than a cowboy should sound.

“What day is it?” Rodney asked. “Of the week, I mean.”

The ensuing pause sounded surprised, which was another way Rodney knew he was hallucinating. Pauses didn’t have feelings. “Tuesday.” The disbelief in the cowboy’s voice was awfully rich coming from a hallucination.

 _Tuesday. Of course._ “Then I'm going back to bed.” To emphasize his point, he curled back up on the... floor, or wherever he was lying. “You better not shoot me with that thing. Sam was a much better hallucination even if she wouldn't take her shirt off.”

More water splashed in his face.

“ _What_?” he growled, not opening his eyes back up.

“Captain.” The protest came in a different, slightly higher voice, which startled Rodney into nervousness for the first time. Sam had been pretty vivid-- amazingly, wonderfully vivid-- but she was someone he knew and was also just one person, not a cowboy and a strange disembodied voice. The injury must be a lot worse this time. “He's suffered a head trauma,” the voice continued, “severe enough that we couldn’t move him. He needs to rest.”

See? Head trauma. Even his hallucinations agreed, which of course they would, he was brilliant.

“Interrogate my other patient if you need to.” The—doctor’s?— voice was firm. “But leave this one alone. The other one doesn't think you're a hallucination.”

“He won’t tell me anything. Know an army man when I see one. We need answers.”

 _Actually, he's a Marine_ , Rodney thought, and that thought trickling into his consciousness jolted him out of his stupor with a shock colder than the water on his face. “Sheppard.” The memories became more of a flood than a trickle: no coffee at breakfast, the orange-colored sky, vertigo in the pit of his stomach; the sudden lurch and tumble of the intertial dampeners failing. Crashing hard into the overhead, pain whiting out his vision. Sheppard piloting the ship, oh God, and now Sheppard was someone’s patient and Rodney was being menaced by a _cowboy._

“Where's Sheppard? Who are you? Where am I?”

The cowboy stepped forward until he was close enough to the bed that Rodney had to flinch. “How do you know our good preacher?” He cocked his head to one side—which should’ve made him look less menacing, but somehow didn’t.

“Mal,” the friendlier voice protested again, and Rodney saw someone begin to step out of a darker corner of the room, “is this really going to—“

“You keep your own counsel, Doctor.” The cowboy spoke steadily, not looking away from Rodney, but with an unnerving sharpness in his voice. “And stay out of sight. Your pretty face has already caused us a world of trouble today.”

“Sorry,” Rodney said, overly loud over the buzzing in his years, “will somebody explain what we're talking about?"

“You,” the cowboy’s voice was dangerously pleasant, “are playing us for fools, which I’m not inclined to take kindly from someone brought us enough trouble so we got no planet in the multiverse we can touch down.”

“What?”

“Our faces didn’t place _themselves_ on the cortex, and surely not along with that kind of reward money. Your other Alliance _huaidan_ ’s in the infirmary.” His voice developed an edge that made Rodney’s hopes for the situation sink rapidly along with his faith in the universal translator. “Doctor patched him up just fine. You remove our faces and our ship from that Alliance piece of _laduz_ i, I won't undo all of the doctor's fine work with a misplaced bullet.”

“When did this escalate to violence?” Rodney squawked, and the pounding in his head sharpened into more of a stab.

“Mal, his blood pressure is reading 159 over 98!”

“ _Actually, that is entirely normal for me_!”

Much to his surprise, there was another moment’s pause, long enough for him to begin collecting his thoroughly scattered thoughts. He quickly weighed the information: Cowboy Bill and the doctor were some kind of criminals on the run, no one else would be this pointlessly violent, and they had wanted posters and everything to complete the absolutely idiotic Wild West theme. They were scared of the Alliance, which meant the Alliance had some kind of weapon bigger than shotguns and probably dealt with violent criminals by shooting now and asking questions later. He couldn't escape without Sheppard even if he wanted to (which he didn't): he needed someone to pilot the jumper.

Which meant the best chance of their survival was for Rodney to find some way to appease the cowboy and convince the crew to hand over Sheppard instead of using him for leverage (his mind flashed back to Kolya and then skittered away in horror).

 _Right. Just that simple._

He swallowed, squared his shoulders, and launched into his best impression of Bingo Square #32: Acting Like You Know Better Than Someone Even When You Really, Really Don’t.

“First of all, whatever you think we’ve done, we didn’t do it,” he said. “I know you’re alien mooks and thus almost certainly not going to listen to a word I say, but I really truly and absolutely have not a single hint as to who you are or what’s going on, which I wouldn’t care about except that you are _pointing a gun at my head_.” He sagged against the bed with the effort of getting that many words out: the doctor inched a little further out of the shadows. “I am undercaffeinated, concussed, maybe having a hypoglycemic episode, probably having a nervous breakdown.”

“Did you have a point to—“

“But,” he said, raising one hand to stave off Cowboy Bill’s objections, “I can probably help you.”

"I'd imagine so," Cowboy Bill said dryly. “Might this help involve you and your friend someplace other than here?"

Rodney mentally bumped his estimation of the cowboy's intelligence up to _slightly less gullible than Ford_. "Well, not necessarily,” he said airily, or as airily as he could when his head was still throbbing and the cowboy hadn't put his gun down. “Let me make sure I’ve got this straight. Your main problem is that you’re the feature presentation on some…” he waved his hands. “Newscast, all worlds police bulletin, something like that.”

“It surely is.”

“How does that get transmitted?”

“You know well as I,” Cowboy Bill said. “Probably better.”

“Well, for the sake of argument, and you don’t seem to have any problem with argument, pretend I don’t.”

Cowboy Bill studied Rodney impassively.

“All right, fine, don’t tell me, that seems pretty much par for the course this conversation, but I assume you don't have the equipment to intercept or override it.”

"Course not," Cowboy Bill said stoutly. "Just simple merchant folk. I suppose you do have that equipment? On your ship?"

"Not without significant modifications to our existing systems," Rodney said-- did he really expect Rodney to be caught that easily?-- "and that probably won't even be necessary. I'm a data and communications expert," understating the case, he was an expert on multiple kinds of technology and a genius physicist but he felt no need to inform them of that fact. "I have a special talent for, er, data retrieval.”

"Is that so?" said Cowboy Bill, one eyebrow raised. “Wasn’t aware such a thing existed.”

“You wouldn’t be.” Rodney crossed his arms. “It’s a difficult and esoteric skill set to learn, and if you fail at any point during the learning process… do you know how scared someone looks when they’re going to be burned alive?”

“Yes,” came the doctor’s voice from the corner, unexpectedly. “Actually.”

Rodney made himself continue after another brief moment of disorientation, this couldn’t just be a concussion, he was getting hypoglycemic, he had to work fast. “At any rate, I’d be willing to gamble that the information that gets transmitted in these bulletins is stored in a secured, centralized database somewhere offworld—probably a station, do you have floating stations here?”

“Willing to gamble,” Cowboy Bill said, clearly ignoring the rest of his sentence. “What stakes?”

“Freedom,” Rodney said promptly, because if he did end up having to do this, he needed a possible escape route. “For me and my pilot. No questions asked, no shooting now and asking questions when you’ve killed us.”

“Don’t see as you’re in much of a position to bargain.”

“Excuse me, I don’t see that you are, either,” said Rodney. “Who are you going to ask for help if you can’t land anywhere without getting arrested?”

“Our mechanic’s plenty good. Could be she could pull the job without any help from you.”

“She can break into the kind of secured system I’ve been talking about? With no notice?” Rodney didn’t even have to fake disbelief this time. “Really?”

The cowboy was silent. Rodney hoped that the silence translated to ‘I’m intrigued.’

“If you have any kind of wave amplifier on this ship, we can start work right now,” he added. “Otherwise, we’ll need to go back to my ship for the necessary materials.” Rodney mentally crossed his fingers before adding, “And I’ll need Sheppard.”

“No.” Cowboy Bill’s response was immediate.

“Not optional,” Rodney said, as irritatedly as he could manage, which was, as always, very. “The technology has a biological lock so only the pilot can turn the technology on: not me.” He let a hint of the bitterness and betrayal he felt before receiving gene therapy creep into his voice. His high school method acting teacher would be so proud. “If you don’t believe me, try to use anything on the ship yourself, then see what he can do with it.” With any luck they’d bring him a drone and ask him to turn it on. “I can’t write active code without him. Do we have a deal?”

This time the silence lasted a lot longer, and Rodney’s heart ratcheted up in speed every second.

“That’s one hell of a job, you can pull it off,” Cowboy Bill said finally. “Doctor?”

“Captain?”

“Have Zoe bring his man to the cargo bay. Jayne!”

For a moment, Rodney thought Cowboy Bill was raising his voice at the doctor. Then, a complete stereotype of a meathead — _Jayne? Really?_ —shuffled into the doorframe, carrying a gun that looked a lot like overcompensation. “Can I break his fingers now?”

Rodney let out a yelp and felt the blood drain from his face and the rest of his extremities.

“No need,” Cowboy Bill said lazily. “But I myself am in need of your escorting this man down to the bay.“

Jayne actually pouted, which in any other circumstances Rodney would have found completely hilarious but in these circumstances—ok, it was still kind of hilarious. “You never let me do the fun stuff.”

Cowboy Bill shrugged. “Might be fun for you, depending. He sabotages anything, tries to communicate with anyone outside this ship, you stop him.”

Jayne frowned. “How am I supposed to know if it they’re rutting communicating?”

“He starts talking to empty air,” the cowboy said, “you shoot him.”

They both turned to look at Rodney, who swallowed and raised Cowboy Bill’s intelligence level to _about on par with the Ewoks._

“Besides Sheppard,” he continued shakily, “you might want to send down your engineer—“

"Don't have an engineer," the cowboy said. "Got a fine mechanic, though. Best in the skies."

 _Figures._ "Well, send him, then--"

“Her.”

" _Her_ , then, fine, must you correct every word I say? Send her down and we can work on adapting the technology to the communications interface on your ship.”

“You’re sure this is a good idea?” the doctor said from the shadows.

“You’re not one to talk about good ideas right about now,” Cowboy Bill snapped, then seemed to deflate a little. “They surely can’t make things any worse.”

The doctor’s voice was hesitant as he replied, “Last time you said something along those lines, Mal, we lost auxillary life support.”

The cowboy turned away from the shadowy doctor, which marked the first time Rodney had been out of his gun’s sights for the entire conversation. “Just get him to the cargo bay, Jayne.” Not that Jayne’s overcompensation stick made him feel any more comfortable.

“Also,” Rodney said on the remarkably twisty route through what seemed like a fairly tiny space, or maybe that was just his years on Atlantis speaking, “I need a PowerBar and some coffee.”

“What the hell are those?”

“Right, right, Pegasus galaxy.” He was about to explain that PowerBars were a carbohydrate-and-sugar-rich protein source and coffee was a kind of stimulant when they rounded the corner to the cargo bay to find three people already waiting for them, only one of them pointing a gun at him.

“Oh, Sheppard, thank God,” he blurted out, because there he was, looking mussed and bandaged slantwise across his head, but otherwise none the worse for the wear. The gorgeous threatening Amazonian woman with the gun, who he assumed was Zoe, scowled. Behind them was the jumper, and Rodney marveled for a moment that they’d even managed to cram it into the tiny cargo bay. If jumpers could get scratched, this one would need a new paint job.

Then he registered the person standing beside them, smiling at him, and his jaw dropped. “ _Jennifer_?” he asked. “What in the hell are _you_ doing here?"


	3. Chapter 3

As it turned out, she was named Kaylee, not Jennifer, and was apparently the ‘best mechanic floating’ Cowboy Bill had been referring to. It was unfortunate that she was his girlfriend’s identical twin from a galaxy far, far away, because otherwise he would’ve snapped at her halfway through his initial diagnostic for being relentlessly cheerful and _never shutting up._ As it was, the resemblance made him practically swallow his tongue every time he tried.

Not that Rodney preferred the meathead or the stoic woman with the gun, but at least they were giving him an incentive to work instead of distracting him. And they weren’t completely stupid, either— they wouldn’t let both of them onto the ship at the same time. When Rodney needed something turned on, he had to leave the ship and point at it for Sheppard, who, to his credit, seemed to have immediately understood why he had been released from confinement and silently activated single pieces of equipment whenever Rodney pointed at them.

Rodney was tuning Jenni—whatshername— the girl in the overalls out so resolutely that he actually jumped at hearing a different voice (and grudgingly gave John the “being startled” bingo square for when they escaped).

“Engine’s stalled.” Rodney whipped his head around to see Cowboy Bill leaning against the doorframe, staring at them accusingly. He was eerily reminded of Sheppard. “They done anything could gum it?”

“Fraid not, Cap’n.” She smiled beatifically and wiped her hands on her overalls as if they had grease on them, which they didn’t. “Never even touched her.”

“Of course not,” Rodney said indignantly, while mentally cataloguing all of the ways in which her logic was completely flawed. He could easily have programmed the ship to emit a low-frequency energy burst calibrated to disrupt ordinary engine function, she certainly didn’t understand Ancient well enough to stop him, and for crying inside, they thought he was a communications expert skilled enough to disrupt _intergalactic communications._

“Go up and _kan yi xia_. I can mind our guests for a while.”

The ship console beeped, almost inaudibly, signifying the end of the diagnostic. “Oh good,” he said out loud for the benefit of his Ewok-brained audience, “we’ve triangulated the signal. John, activate the viewscreen.”

It was better than he’d feared, but worse than he’d hoped. The power cell was about seventy-five percent drained; not enough for a short hyperspace jump even if he’d been willing to chance one after the way the last jump had gone. But the puddlejumper’s impulse engines would be more than sufficient to outpace a mechanical engine. The cloaking mechanism was functional, and despite how roughly the jumper had been crammed into the cargo bay, the atmospheric pressure in the ship was constant. They wouldn’t die of exposure the moment they took the ship out of the bay.

Rodney breathed in extremely quiet relief. First order of business now that he’d confirmed the ship would hold up to an escape attempt was to determine who exactly they should be running from.

John stumbled, uncharacteristically, and lurched into Rodney to balance himself. While leaning on Rodney’s shoulder, he muttered, “Where are we?” John wasn’t looking at him, which was a nice artistic touch, but Rodney was glad Cowboy Bill wasn’t here. He would’ve known trained soldiers don’t stumble like that.

“I don’t know.” He had briefly considered and discarded the possibility that he and John had landed in an alternate universe: there was no conceivable way for a malfunctioning hyperspace drive to create that effect. “Obviously there was a malfunction in the experimental hyperdrive.”

“Bingo,” John said, quietly but with some irony, rubbing his side as if it hurt. “Can we get home?”

“Working on it,” he snapped, and oops, that was loud enough for the meathead to notice.

“No talking,” Jayne grumbled without taking his _disturbingly adoring_ gaze off his gun. John stepped away from Rodney and settled back on one of the crates in the cargo bay.

With nothing better to do, Rodney took advantage of the silence to begin the task that he was actually assigned.

Calibrating the jumper’s communications network to feed nearby data streams into the temporary data banks was surprisingly simple. Standard private military broadcasting system: instant communication going out, burst-relay system going in, simple to hack if he decided he needed to. Pinpointing the exact data files he was responsible for erasing was more difficult, but searching for images and physical descriptions within the data stream pulled up the correct files (three of them).

The meathead was apparently guilty of hundreds of crimes, which didn’t surprise Rodney in the least. Strangely, the doctor’s poster (which offered the highest reward of all) listed his most recent crime as breaking into a hospital to practice medicine. Rodney could almost understand Cowboy Bill’s annoyance-- danger and self-sacrifice for the sake of the greater good was one thing, but that would be extreme even for Sheppard.

And next to Cowboy Bill’s name--Mal Reynolds, apparently-- was an unusual phrase.

 _Known Browncoat sympathizer._

Well, that was a place to start, at least. Several tweaks to the code later, a ship a few light years away poured a very informative history module for young children into his computer. Reading it reminded him of his World History class in high school: story after story of idealistic idiots fighting against organized, technologically advanced civilizations and dying horribly.

Contacting the Alliance was tempting. Despite that one unfortunate early incident with the Wraith allies, years in the Pegasus Galaxy had conditioned him to pounce on any culture with superior technology. And Atlantis, for all he thrived on the day to day disasters and discoveries, was centered around a bureaucracy, a hierarchy, in a way that he found himself missing in the crazy anarchy of off-world missions sometimes. The anarchy here was worse than most, and prepping the ship’s impulse engines wouldn’t take much effort at all—

And he would have, but Bingo Square 11 was “making decisions without all the facts,” and even though Sheppard was one to judge, he’d looked upset adding that square. Rodney thought of the IOA, the hoops Teyla and Ronon had had to jump through just to be considered human, the dangerous hostility to new ideas and new people. History was written by the victors, and ‘bureaucracy’ wasn’t enough information.

Kaylee burst his thought-bubble by re-entering the jumper. He scrambled to dismiss the information from his comm screen, but she was smiling at him too intently for him to have a prayer of doing it subtly.

“Nothing real serious,” she said, despite the fact that he hadn’t asked, in that irritatingly bubbly tone of voice. “Coil cracked. Weren’t hard to put her right again, engine just got to cool down.” For the first time, a slight hint of a frown crossed her face. “Cap’n ain’t real happy about that. Says we’re a sitting target.”

As if on cue, “Zoe, Wash’s waiting in the mess, go get yourself something to eat,” Mal called over his shoulder from the doorway of the jumper. To Rodney, he added, “Taking an awfully long time for a specialist.”

“Shouldn’t be much longer,” Rodney said. “I’ve located the data files. I can’t believe you’re angry at the doctor for trying to go to the hospital and do his job.” He hadn’t meant that last bit to slip out.

“Hospital job’s our business,” Mal said, with a surprising edge to his voice. “Mind your own.”

“The job—“ _Oh._ What little budding sympathy Rodney had for them vanished as the pieces fell into place. The doctor wasn’t doing his job, he was helping his crew steal medicines from sick people.

Mal either ignored or didn’t notice Rodney’s sudden glare. “Mind telling what you’re doing there?”

Mal was staring at the screen that contained the condensed history of the Alliance which, luckily, Rodney had translated into Ancient. “It’s scanning their operational grid for anomalies,” he said, a little too quickly. The look of suspicion on Mal’s face deepened: the posters would have to go after all. A system this easy to break would be easy to fix, anyway, he could replace the posters once he and Sheppard were free to leave. “Give me just a moment.”

First step, download the posters to his databanks, viewscreen emphatically _off_ this time. He heard Mal shifting his weight impatiently from foot to foot, but held up a quelling hand and focused his attention on the database itself. A simple buffer overflow should do it. A few taps on the padd overwrote the code that told the program how much data to expect. He prepared to send his own data burst—

And a subroutine that had been waiting for _exactly that move_ unceremoniously deleted his five minutes worth of perfectly useable code. There might as well have been giant red block letters blinking “ACCESS DENIED.”

“…huh.” He tapped out a few more patterns on the padd, heart momentarily sinking. There had to be a remote administration backdoor. “Let me just—“ There wasn’t. This didn’t make sense, the security was far too sophisticated to belong to a network this basic. The underlying principles of the coding were familiar, but everything was _wrong_ somehow, like Asgaard or Ancient tech as interpreted by a significantly less advanced civilization, like the Genii and their nuclear bombs. He wouldn’t be able to delete anything without being plugged onto the site itself with admin privileges. Unless...

 _Where the hell did they get this kind of network security, and why are they wasting it on_ wanted posters _?_

The ship lurched violently sideways, and Rodney stumbled.

“What in the—“

“Captain!” The cowboy’s head snapped sharply towards the door at Zoe, who was entering the room with an alarming urgency in her stride. “Alliance boats, two of em, just came on comm. Want to see our ident certificates. Told them we’re stalled, Inara can’t put them off much longer. Think that was a warning.”

Mal swore more colorfully than Rodney had thought was even possible, even using two languages like Zelenka. “Don’t suppose they’ll take bribes?”

“Price on our head’s more than we could come up with in ten lifetimes.”

Mal turned to Rodney. “Call off your men,” he said. His voice was clear and commanding, but Rodney had enough close and personal experience with desperation to know what it sounded like.

“I would if I could—”

“Call off your men _now_ , or your friend dies.” And he raised his gun, which Rodney only just now realized hadn’t been trained on him for the last fifteen minutes, and pointed it at Sheppard.

“I can’t call off people I haven’t called _on_!” Rodney said, voice rising in panic. His comm beeped. “ _What!_ ” he shouted, before realizing _his comm had just beeped_.

“You have been manipulating our communications network’s base code,” came a strangely dull voice from the speakers.

“Oh my God.” No system should have been able to detect the kind of subtle manipulation of computer code, let alone a system this crude, and no one should be able to know his comm even _existed_. Rodney fumbled for a visual on the HUD before remembering at the last minute that he wasn’t supposed to turn anything on. “John!”

John was already at the doorway before Mal barred it and pulled off the safety.

“We need a visual!”

"Unnecessary." The voice was different, equally deadened, but harsh where there was a blankness in the other voice. “You have acted in violation of Valerian code 1.64, section three, part two. Violations are punished by three to twelve years.” They sounded _cold_. Rodney felt the chill of it crawling down his spine.

“Now you wait just one moment.” The captain strode forward, to Rodney’s astonishment. “These men are on my ship. They’re my responsibility, little as I like it, and I’m willing to personally vow they ain’t been out of our sight long enough to—“

“You have acted in violation of Valerian code 1.64, section three, part two. Prepare to be boarded.” The communication shut off.

“Oh come on!” Rodney yelled at nothing in particular. “The Borg are more polite than that!” _Oh God,_ he thought with panicked clarity, we’re going to die, _whoever the Alliance are—oh God, what if it’s an alliance with the Wraith? – though maybe not, Wraith worshippers are always hot-- they're not happy, and Mal is pointing a gun at Sheppard’s head, these people want to kill you, but they want to kill you because they think you called the Alliance on them— oh God, the Alliance is going to kill everyone on this ship. We’re not going to die,_ he thought, stomach churning with the dregs of pure adrenaline. _We’re going to die_ twice.

Three seconds after he realized he’d been saying all of that out loud, his mind surged into light-speed free association mode the way it always did during emergencies.

Not-dying meant not being seen or not being there. This ship clearly didn’t have the technology to stand off a ship like that, and the drones had been removed from the jumper because of hyperspace instability, a precaution Rodney was cursing now.

“You!” he called desperately to Jayne, who straightened up from the slouch he somehow didn’t pull off half so well as Sheppard did. “Is the Alliance ship tracking us visually, or tracking our power signature, or, I don’t know, tracking body heat, or lifesigns?”

Jayne paused. “What?”

Rodney closed his eyes. “For God’s sake! Doesn’t anyone know how things work around here?" He rubbed at his forehead, trying to quell the panic. “Look. If I release a low-level gravitron pulse it should disrupt any visual they have on us. We’ll need an escape route, I may need a fair amount of extra power, don’t know the mechanics of the ship, so I need your help to pull this off.”

“Now look—“

“I’m saving my own skin here as much as yours!"

“Cold storage’s got a fair bit of power,” said Kaylee, Rodney took back what he had been thinking about her.

“Electric or fuel-burning? Never mind,” as she opened her mouth to answer, “just piece together a power interface that generates or circulates an electrical current, even you should be capable of that, I can do the rest.”

“Serenity don’t much like other people working on her. I can do it.”

“Fine, fine,” she couldn’t screw it up too badly anyway. “Just let me... Sheppard!”

Sheppard got up as if to help, and the meathead blocked his way.

“One at a time.”

“Oh, you have got to be—“ Abruptly, he decided, time to abandon the pretense, he couldn’t waste any more time. He willed the ship’s systems _on_ , and Jayne jumped at the sudden flood of light. “Yes, I can turn them on,” he said, fingers dancing over the controls, “forgive me for trying to keep my commanding officer alive, now _let me do my job_.” Rodney could hear himself snarling.

Mercifully, no one interrupted him again.

“Kaylee, patch the power source in,” he said, praying to God or the Flying Spaghetti Monster that she was as competent a mechanic as Mal had said, otherwise this wasn’t going to work and things were going to explode. With lots of sparks.

Instead, the ship shuddered, then was silent. “That was the pulse,” he said unnecessarily.

Several beats passed, and Rodney allowed himself to hope.

Then the ship lurched again. _No no no no no—_ They _had_ been tracking the lifesigns, or the energy signature, and he couldn’t create a workaround fast—

“They’ve got docking clamps on us!” Kaylee sounded panicked.

Panicking himself, he quickly sorted through the other not-dying thoughts flowing to his conscious. The most direct associations with _hiding_ or _fleeing_ were immediately discarded: no nearby Stargate to escape through, not enough time or technical knowledge to sabotage the enemy ship or fake the self-destruction of their own ship. His mind started jumping further from the original reference points: no allies to mount an offensive, then, more morbidly, no space suit or personal shield to protect him in the increasingly likely event that Mal the cowboy decided to space him for something that wasn’t even remotely their fault, right when he was starting to not hate the man—

The shield.

 _To his utter relief, the water spilled out as he opened the door. It wasn’t a hallucination, he thought, suspended between Zelenka and Sheppard, the dim glow of the— shield? lighting the way between the submerged jumpers._ I’m not going to drown.

“The jumper,” he said out loud, snapping his fingers urgently. “The ship,” he added, because the captain looked both blank and threatening. “Sheppard!”

“Rodney?”

“The modifications Zelenka made changing the cloak to a shield, in the databanks, can you—“

“On it.” He jogged up the ramp of the jumper, and of course he understood, Rodney could program the systems better than anyone, but for continuous fine control, Sheppard needed to be the one in charge—

“Not a chance.” Now both Mal and the Meathead were blocking the entrance.

“Look,” he was out of time to establish credibility, “The jumper has a shield device, and it’s more than possible that we can expand its range to encompass this ship, not just its immediate vicinity. Sheppard’s done it before and-- ” Jayne looked slightly more baffled and Mal looked slightly more annoyed. “I can push them off the ship,” he said. “Do you want my help or not?”

“We’re not letting you both on that boat.” Mal didn’t put down his gun. “One stays.”

Something in Rodney finally snapped. “You completely unmitigated moron!” he yelled, balling his fists at his sides. “We don’t have time for this! In a few minutes, we are going to be boarded, and I don’t even know who the Alliance is but I haven’t missed the fact that you seem to think if they reach us we’re all going to die horribly! Even if I’m setting off a bomb and leaving you to die, will it make us _any more dead than if we keep having this argument_?”

The cowboy shifted from one leg to another, shoulders tense. Then, “Jayne,” he said abruptly, reholstering his gun. “Let him up.”

“Oh thank God,” Rodney moaned, “John, get over here.”

John sunk into the pilot’s seat in that disturbingly comfortable way. Jayne jumped when the ship disappeared, then jumped again when it reappeared with a glowing bubble around it.

“You,” Rodney said to Kaylee. “Keep the jumper attached to the power supply, feed me as much as you’ve got. How much is powering the storage?”

“Few hundred kilowatts—“

“And how fast can your ship run?”

“Seven hundred fifty three miles the hour.”

There wasn’t nearly enough power to sustain the shield long enough to maneuver the ship away at that speed, he realized. They were going to have to jump to hyperspace. If Kaylee wasn’t feeding him as much power as she claimed, even the short jump he needed to get out of range was going to rip them apart, and even then, with the errors in the hyperspace modulator—

“Are they going to kill us if they catch us?” Rodney said.

“Probably,” said Zoe. “If we’re lucky.”

“Sheppard, we’re going to need to jump.”

“Jump?” Mal asked.

“You’re kidding, right?”

“No!”

“I hate Tuesdays,” Sheppard muttered.

Rodney _pushed_ , and the window opened, and Sheppard darted the ship through.

The ship shook so hard Rodney thought it was going to fall apart. The room went abruptly dark and silent except for the strange glow of the ship’s shield.

Dimly, slowly, it began to fade back on.

“Pardon me.”

Sheppard whirled around, and Rodney followed suit to find himself facing the barrel of the cowboy’s gun for the third time today.

They studied each other for a long, frozen moment, Sheppard with arms raised as if to ward off Mal’s gun with the sheer power of his will, no weapon or tac vest necessary; Mal with an even-more-inscrutable-than-usual look on his face; Rodney trying his best not to pass out from sheer terror or exhaustion.

Finally, _finally,_ Mal lowered his gun. “Looks like we might owe you folk an apology.”

Rodney would have given his wittiest scathing reply, but before he had the chance the jumper behind him emitted a terrible screech, and the shield and all of the viewscreens cut out at once.


	4. Chapter 4

The table was weirdly quiet. Rodney had expected celebration and laughing and too many beers—that always happened when the team had a narrow escape, he thought with a pang for Teyla and Ronon. Instead there was still more strangely inedible food from the ship’s stores (nothing with citrus, he had made sure of that) and more strained silence. The doctor had tried to get him to drink something while recovering from his concussion—an energy mix—but after he called it “healthful and nutritious,” Rodney balked.

At least one of them seemed to be making an effort. “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” the woman who had introduced herself as Inara said graciously. “I hear we have you to thank for our narrow escape earlier this evening.”

“It was nothing,” Sheppard said, grinning his wide look-at-me grin.

“We’re real sorry for the welcome,” Kaylee chimed in, smiling. “Only with the Alliance runnin’ after us, we couldn’t be too sure.”

“Makes you feel any better, you’d have gotten a worse reception if we thought you were Reavers,” said Wash. “Alliance is almost always a step up from Reavers.”

“We never woulda thought Reavers! Your ship’s too pretty.”

“She's a space heap, Kaylee,” The expression on Mal’s face was surprisingly soft. Rodney hadn’t thought he was capable of that kind of fondness: apparently people who looked like Jennifer brought it out in everyone. “Don't have enough power left to outpace a _congming de houzi_. Anyway, we’ve got plenty of cause not to pick up strays besides Reavers.”

“Picked me up,” she said playfully. “Anyway, don’t matter if she's a heap. She's still pretty.” For a moment, Kaylee sounded disturbingly like Elia's father waxing rhapsodic about his virtuous and kind and non-vampiric Wraith daughter. Then, even more disturbingly, she _patted the kitchen wall._ “Don't worry, sweetheart, I'll always love you best.”

“Excuse me,” Rodney said to distract himself from the stream of horrible disturbing information, “What are Reavers?”

The sounds of silverware clinking against porcelain ceased abruptly as everyone, with the exception of John, stopped eating and stared at him.

“What?” He shifted restlessly. “Your naming schema make little to no sense. And for that matter, give me more information about the Alliance, the other ship’s databanks were biased, and the conclusion I’m coming to with the available information is that you’re Han Solo and the Alliance is really the Empire, which again points to your naming scheme being _completely backwards_.”

Now John was staring at him too, though Rodney was pretty sure it was just to convey with his eyes that Rodney had just lost the Bingo square for ‘making references to geek trivia at inappropriate times.’

“Now where did you say you were from again?” Kaylee said slowly.

\---

Thirty-five minutes of explanation later, Rodney said accusingly:

“So the Alliance _is_ the Empire. Oh, that is just _confusing_.”

“You’re right,” said Wash. “We wanted to call them the Wraith, except that seemed like more of a man-eating bug kind of name, so we had to settle.”

“Man-eating bug _men_ ,” John corrected. “The man-eating bugs are called Aretes bugs.” He was _enjoying_ this.

“Your villains are stupid,” Jayne grumbled.

“You haven’t met Todd,” Sheppard said. “He’s pretty smart. For a bug man from another universe.”

“Actually,” Rodney said, “I don’t think this is another universe.”

John shot a glance at Kaylee and popped a forkful of reconstituted protein into his mouth. "How do you figure?" As always, he was chewing with his mouth open.

“There isn’t enough overlap,” Rodney said, nervously aware of the strange looks he was getting from the rest of the crew. “Even with Jennifer here-- Kaylee!" he said at her slightly appalled look. "Kaylee, I know you're not the Jennifer I know, you're an engineer and very competent, not that she's not competent, but she's a doctor, the doctor here is Simon, though you do look extraordinarily like Jennifer which is strange, because different sides of the galaxy, slim possibility of look-alikes, I've never met anyone who looks just like me and you're sure you weren't separated at birth?"

“Rodney?" Sheppard said.

“Yes?”

“Get back to the point."

"Right, well. The fact that she looks just like Jennifer makes it actually less likely that we’ve landed in another universe. Universes can diverge in a number of different ways, ways that seem infinite, but there are only so many events that can be reshaped into something completely different. The odds of landing in an alternate universe with roughly the same pattern of biological evolution but only one genetic profile in common... well, it's theoretically possible, but the odds are about three hundred and seventy three million to one."

"Never tell me the odds," John quipped.

Rodney crossed his arms. “You are not allowed to make fun of me ever again.”

John rubbed the back of his head, like that was any kind of adequate response. “So where are we, then?”

“The diagnostic I’ll be running after dinner should tell me more of what went wrong with the hyperdrive,” Rodney said. “We’ll be out of their way as soon as we can pinpoint our coordinates, or I suppose vice versa as well. Anyway," Rodney said hastily, before John could ask him more questions that he couldn’t answer, Rodney couldn’t let him get in the habit of that, "where are we going until the commotion dies down?”

The silence that time was tense enough that he tore his eyes from John and noticed everyone at the table either not looking at him or giving him slightly hostile looks. “Right, I’ll just...”

All of their plates clattered as Jayne slammed his hand onto the table.

“Job’s still good,” he said gruffly (although Rodney wasn’t sure he could say anything a different way). “No reason we’re back to sittin’ now’s the ship’s gone.”

“Ship’s gone, not the trouble,” Mal said. “When folk save your lives, it’s polite to save the arguin’ for after dinner.”

“Trouble don’t matter,” Jayne said. “We need the credits, we don’t get moving the cargo’ll get all rotten without a coldbox.” Rodney winced with unexpected guilt.

“The way to our dropoff point ain’t clear.” Mal’s voice was getting louder, cutting through any semblance of polite conversation. “Not to mention the fact of those all-world bulletins—“

“Don’t even look like me,” Jayne muttered. “I look much more heroic.”

“So I would take kindly to you shutting your mouth.”

“I do hope we stop near New Melbourne. They have a wonderful theater community and they’re famous for their _paocai yu_ ,” Inara said gamely, as if this were just an ordinary conversation. “It’s a kind of fish,” at John’s blank look.

“New Melbourne?” John asked, stretching out in his chair in an extremely distracting way.

“You seem to be familiar with all of the local tourist traps.” Rodney looked away from Sheppard fast, but not fast enough to avoid the neutrally speculative look on Inara’s face.

“I travel a lot in the course of my work.” Inara smiled at him encouragingly. Behind her, a girl padded quietly into the room. No one else seemed to be paying any attention to her, which just figured, her hair looked like it hadn’t been washed for the last century and no one was bothered.

He turned his attention back to Inara. “You work with them?” She didn’t exactly seem the smuggler type. Though now he was imagining her with a gun, and that was disturbingly hot.

She laughed, a ridiculously beautiful laugh. “Oh no, I’m not involved with their cargo runs,” she said. “We usually have a few more respectable types on board. Our Shepherd, for example, is away at the Bathgate Abbey for his yearly pilgrimage."

“And then there’s me,” said the girl in the doorway, face completely blank.

"Meimei!" Simon jumped to his feet. "How did you get out?"

If it was possible, the girl, whose name was apparently Meimei, went even blanker. "One oh five three two one. Mother's birthday is February 19th, two divided by 19 is .1053, rounded to four digits because you have only four family members, square root of your first year grade in college is 2, you have one favorite sister rounded to the nearest whole number." She grinned, suddenly, the expression eerily out of place on her face.

Simon looked sheepish. "I should know better than to use a combination lock."

"Yes," Mal said. "You rightly should.”

“Who’s she?” Rodney asked, which made Simon shoot him an appalled, confused kind of glare like he was a doctoral candidate who had forgotten to factor gravity into his thesis.

“She,” Mal said, gesturing in her direction, “is Little Miss Trouble. Reason he’s on the run in the first place, reason we’re on the run now.”

“It wasn’t her fault they knew we were coming,” Simon protested immediately, too immediately for this to be the first time they’d this particular argument. He gathered Meimei close to his side, who clung to his shoulder in response.

“Now don’t misunderstand me, I’m not greatly pleased with your doctoring in a Core hospital where anyone could’ve made you out. No surprise they did and you got your pretty face all over security.” Rodney was awfully glad that Mal’s tirade wasn’t directed at him this time around. “I ain’t forgotten. But Miss Trouble does have a way of making things not go according to plan.”

“Mal, stop bullying them and let them eat dinner,” Inara said sharply, so sharply that Rodney wasn’t the only one to look at her in surprise. “We have guests.”

“You keep a civil tongue in your head.” But to Rodney’s slight surprise, Mal looked tired rather than angry. After a moment, he settled back in his chair. “After dinner River goes back. Set her a lock’ll hold her this time, Doctor.”

River, Rodney filed away in his mind. Apparently he was doomed to get everyone’s name wrong tonight.

“Being respectable on this ship has got to be hard,” John said a few moments later, into the sudden return of quiet.

Inara smiled. “Occasionally.”

“So what do you do?” Rodney asked. “If you don’t work with them.”

“I have an established business as a Companion, and I rent a private shuttle from Mal. He drops me off planetside when I have bookings.”

“Bookings?” he asked, a little puzzled. “So you’re some kind of tour guide?”

Jayne dropped his fork with a clink and guffawed.

“You could say that,” Inara said, ignoring him.

"Mal doesn't," River said.

“Inara’s a whore,” Mal said, in the tone of the extremely helpful.

Rodney choked, mind suddenly filled with incredibly and disturbingly vivid mental images. He vaguely heard her saying something in protest, something about “years of specialized training,” but he barely heard it through the embarrassed blood rushing to his face.

Then he looked over at John for support and John was looking back at him, expression somewhere between stern warning and deliberate relaxation. Like he didn’t mind and neither should Rodney. Like Rodney should maybe practice some cultural relativism and join him in the fun.

“I’m… just… going to run diagnostics on the ship, see what went wrong,” Rodney said, scooting his chair back from the table as fast as possible, almost tripping over his feet in the process. As an afterthought, he grabbed the plate he was eating from.

Inara continued frowning severely as he retreated, though it wasn’t clear whether the frown was aimed at Mal, Rodney, or both.


	5. Chapter 5

Half an hour later, Rodney was slumped over the terminal, tablet clutched loosely in his hands.

“Another square for me,” came a voice from behind him. “Taking a nap on the jumper during a mission.”

“Unfair,” Rodney said automatically, forcing himself to an upright position. “That was not a nap, I was just resting my head after a very long day.”

Sheppard sat next to him and smoothed his stupid hair back. “You doing okay?”

“No. Yes. This has been a long day,” Rodney said. “I'm assuming the rest of dinner went all right.”

“Other than the screaming fight at the dinner table,” John said. “She threatened to stop paying rent, leave the ship, and throw a shoe at him before she went back to her shuttle. What about the diagnostic?”

“You don’t want to kn— a shoe?”

“Sure I do,” said John, and ignored the question, which was probably for the best. “So. Where are we?”

Rodney exhaled, tucking his toes under his feet and perching on the edge of the chair. “Not an alternate universe, like I said. The amplification crystals were improperly networked in a way I didn’t think was possible: they actually calibrated to the DHD’s signal and tried to create a hyperspace window that was also a Stargate.” He winced. “It’s amazing that we’re not dead. Especially considering my luck today.”

“Wow,” John said.

“Yeah,” Rodney said, looking down. “Though for not being an alternate universe, it’s very strange how much the cultures here parallel earlier Earth history.”

“Sometimes I think they’re speaking Chinese,” John volunteered. “When they’re not speaking English.”

“Nah,” Rodney said. “My third grade rival was Chinese, it’s a completely different language.”

John gave him a weird look.

“What?” he said defensively. “I’d remember! Anyway, we’re out of sensor range of Atlantis, but I’ve managed to track the direction. A few hundred hyperspace jumps and we should be golden.”

“You don’t sound too happy about that,” John said, more astutely than Rodney would like. As usual.

This was always the part he hated the most: the look on John’s face when Rodney gave him news he didn’t like. “It’s bad,” he confessed wearily. “As you might recall from my underwater adventure, the jumper has a large power supply, but it’s not unlimited. The jumpers were meant as short-range ships traveling between Atlantis and other worlds. After a jump you pilot it back to Atlantis and it recharges. It’s like the world’s largest laptop.” That managed to tease a small smile from the Colonel. “The problem comes when you keep the ship away from the city for, say, months, or program it to work outside of its usual capacity—“

“Like giving it a hyperspace mod,” John finished.

“Exactly.” Rodney rubbed at his forehead, but the stress headache didn’t fade. “I repaired the power overload, and no control crystals are broken, which would ordinarily be good, except there’s nothing I can compensate for or work around. Just not enough energy to power the ship.”

“I hate to say the obvious thing, but what about Kaylee? The ship could route more power…”

“It’s not enough,” Rodney said. “They could probably feed us some power from the engines, but barely enough to get the cloak working, let alone protect the ship from ripping apart during hyperdrive. Also, I scanned the Alliance cruiser while they were nearby. They’re the most technologically advanced culture out here,” to an extent that really bothered and disconcerted Rodney still, “and they were running their ships on something just a little stronger than nuclear power.” He sighed. “I ran all the diagnostics three times.”

Sheppard sat down on the edge of the console. “So what you’re saying is we’re stuck,” he said flatly.

“In the absence of finding a ZPM tucked away in the ship somewhere…” Rodney crossed his arms, not looking at John. “Looks like it.” He wanted to say _we’ll find a way home_ or _for God’s sake stop looking like that_ , but the former was hollow and the latter wouldn't work.

Someone behind them cleared their throat. When Rodney looked back, Mal was watching them with a sober, thoughtful frown. “I think we should meet in the kitchen,” he said, “and discuss how to maybe help us both out of some troubles.”

\---

“I propose we talk trade.”

“We’re not giving you our ship,” Rodney said immediately.

Mal frowned. “Wasn’t asking,” he said. “Besides, how could you get home without a ship, you _meiyounaozi de bianxingchong_?”

He could almost hear Sheppard suppressing laughter behind him. “It seems to be the standard request when we're kidnapped by hicks,” he said, trying not to sound like he was whining.

“He’s not an amoeba,” said River.

Rodney blinked. “I’m sorry, what?”

“I seem to recollect you’re having a bit of trouble getting back whence you came.” Mal said, ignoring the crazy girl with an ease that could only be born of long experience. “Something about being short on fuel and supplies?”

“In a manner of speaking. In an extremely crude manner of speaking that is in no way accurate.”

“And you know we got our own troubles making our dropoff.”

“I already told you,” Rodney said tiredly, “I can’t hack into the system remotely, and I can’t triangulate the signal to pinpoint where we’d need to go to sabotage it.”

“Again, wasn’t asking.”

“Then I don’t know what Sheppard’s been telling you, but we’re not exactly experts at being fugitives from the law,” Rodney said. “We know nothing about this galaxy, I shouldn’t have to remind you that our ship is completely beyond repair, and be glad you’ve never seen Sheppard’s evasive flying skills.”

“Hey,” Sheppard said.

“It’s nothing to be ashamed of. It makes you a better kamikaze pilot, which seems to be your schtick, Mr. Let’s Fly An Atomic Bomb To The Middle Of The Atmosphere.”

"Job we got,” Mal cut in, "it’s good money, and a good cause.”

“For his old friend the drug runner,” Wash said helpfully. “By which I mean the Robin Hood of the skies,” he amended at Mal’s glare.

“Tera’s an old friend from the wars.” Confirming Rodney’s suspicions-- not just a Browncoat _sympathizer_ , then. “Caught in the past, though, and doesn’t plan on moving forward.”

“There are worse vices to have,” Wash said. “Wine, women, song, and all that.”

“Says you,” muttered Jayne.

“Point is,” Mal cut in, “Tera’s got the money to indulge her particular brand of unhealthy, on account of being a _pharmacist_ ,” he said with an emphatic look at Wash. “Stocks medicines on a crazy world bans all sale of drugs. Whole planet’s full of people can’t sleep on account of the sun never goes down, and not a one can buy proper sleep medicine aboveground. We’re to drop off our goods at her private spaceport.”

“And?”

“The station’s full of wartime curios. One thing in particular I think might interest you.”

He spread out a piece of yellowed paper on the table, and Rodney leaned over to see.

“Back before the war, planet name of Londinium was just being colonized, and nothing would grow. Waves of settlers dashed to death on the rocks there.“

“Right poetic, captain.”

“It’s how the history books tell it. What they don’t tell is how it changed. Couple of farmers found a mineral name of adamium grew there natural, could power just about anything. They harnessed it and used it to build a terraformer so people could eat.”

“A freelance terraformer? Weren’t those outlawed years ago?”

“On account of what happened on Londinium,” Mal said. “Some Browncoats thought to make a weapon of it when things with the Alliance turned bad.” His shoulders slumped: not enough to be noticeable if Rodney weren’t used to tracking much more minute expression changes on Sheppard’s body. “Didn’t work real good. Coats on that planet were wiped out, planet was dug clean of adamium with the terraformer, and then the thing was retired for good.”

“Your friend’s got the terraformer,” John said.

“Exactly. Or the core, more precise, rest of it was sold for scrap. Tera owes me more than a few favors, could get you in to see it.”

It was interesting. “It could be completely useless,” he said aloud. “And you still haven’t told me what exactly we’re supposed to do to help you.”

“Saw your ship disappear a moment back there,” Mal said. “I recall correctly, you yelled at your crewmate to modify the cloak to a shield, and the ship disappeared. “

Rodney was reluctantly impressed. He’d thought he was the only one with a freakish memory for crisis situations.

“As I see it, main problem of our situation is everyone in the multiverse out to catch us. But the Alliance can’t catch what they can’t see.”

“I see the extremely unsubtle point you’re trying to make,” Rodney said, “But in case you’ve forgotten, I’ll remind you a fourth time. The ship is broken. Out of power. It can't even run its own shield.”

"Don't look too broke to me!" Kaylee said cheerfully. "Just needs a little rewiring, a little extra fuel, a little spit 'n polish, and she's good to go."

"You know, I take back what I said about you looking like Jennifer. What are you, twelve?"

“Ship needs more power,” Mal said, “we set it up with more power."

Rodney crossed his arms. “And how exactly are you going to manage that, hm?"

The moment of silence stretched as Rodney followed the captain's gaze to what passed for an engine room, and then several aeons of silence passed as he realized the implications of that gaze.

"Oh no. No no no no _no_ , you cannot possibly me to attach a piece of highly efficient modern technology to… that miserable excuse for an electrical fire!" This could not be happening, he was going to stress himself to hypoglycemia, he could feel the beginnings of the reaction coming on. "The power fluctuations alone are liable to damage the control crystals, not to mention the irreparable damage to the power conduits, not to mention --"

"Rodney." John rested a hand on his shoulder.

"Ain't many folk'll help you fuel your ship without getting paid," Mal continued as if no one had interrupted him. “We’re more inclined than average to do you a kindness because of you doing us the same.”

Rodney looked at John appealingly. "Colonel, we're talking fluctuations that would short out the crystals, Colonel, crystals which, might I remind you, control the HUD, the driver pods, the hyperdrive, life support-- we'd be sitting ducks! No, not sitting, floating ducks, ducks floating helplessly in the cold of space!" He paused and inhaled deeply, waiting for the stars to clear from his vision. "And do you have a PowerBar? I'm hungry."

As usual, Rodney could only tell from the slight narrowing of John's eyes that he'd even heard Rodney's request. "But it's possible that the drive charger would give us enough power to get us home. Right?"

"I suppose it's a remote possibility, but--"

"That's what I like to hear." John turned back to Mal with that obnoxious grin. "We'll do it."

"Ex _cuse_ me--"

"We'll do it, Rodney."

"Did you not just hear me telling you how extraordinarily impossible that is?"

"Impossible, Rodney? I thought you could do four impossible things before breakfast." John smirked.

“Not unless I've had my morning coffee! And it's six impossible things, not four, I can't believe you just misquoted _Lewis Carroll_ , who you shouldn't be quoting anyway because he was a children’s writer and you’re not twelve years old anymore.” But damn him, Rodney could feel his resolve crumbling under the weight of Sheppard's irritating faith in him. "Though I suppose if we rerouted power from the plasma inhibitors to the fusion generator, then rewrote the base subcommands for the control mechanism..."

John looked totally unsurprised, but his smirk may have widened a bit. A few centimeters. "Like I said. We'll do it."

"Kaylee?” said Mal, in a voice that heavily implied that he needed a second opinion on whether _Rodney_ was competent enough to make the alterations he was suggesting. Rodney didn’t actually know whether to laugh or be more insulted than he'd ever been or both.

Kaylee frowned. "I dunno, cap’n. What he's sayin'... it could work, but it's awful complicated."

"Well, yes, advanced wormhole theory will do that,” Rodney said, settling on being irritated.

"But I don’t think nothing’s gonna go all hinky.”

"That doesn't even make sense. Not to mention I'd think kinky would've been more of," McKay gestured vaguely in the Companion's general direction, "her domain." Then his brain caught up with his mouth again and he bit his lip. "Not that I mean any insult, nothing wrong with being a dominatrix--"

"Rodney."

"Yes!" The last noise, much to his outrage, was almost a squeak.

"Shut up."

"At least give me the PowerBar," Rodney trained his best Tragically Disgruntled Scientist glare on John. "Genius requires blood sugar."

\---

Much to his surprise, Mal had been right about how good a mechanic Kaylee was. Once he got past the part where she looked like his girlfriend and acted like a twelve-year-old, she actually reminded him a little of Sheppard: her intuitive grasp of mechanical engineering was enviable. Sheppard was better on his feet, though:. Kaylee was completely out of her element as soon as you left the realm of the mechanical, though that didn’t stop her from cheerfully and uncomplainingly trying her best. She had struggled to reconfigure the control crystals in the jumper until Rodney snapped at her to stop before she broke something and draw him a map of the unpleasantly inefficient inner workings of the Firefly.

Kaylee had looked wounded, which made him feel guilty, which he wanted to dismiss as misplaced loyalty towards his girlfriend. Except they really weren’t that much alike, he realized with a strange twisting in his stomach: Jennifer never smiled that widely or that openly. Not for anything.

The map Kaylee drew him proved extremely useful, so he grudgingly thanked her, and much to the relief he would never admit, she brightened again and started coming up with more useful ideas. She was very good at brainstorming ways to connect the jumper to the Firefly’s power supply, which involved much more engineering than programming.

River was another surprise.

“It’s wrong,” she said, balancing on one foot and leaning over his shoulder.

“I beg your pardon?” he said, before realizing he was talking to the crazy girl. “Also, go away.”

Undeterred, she sat down next to him and grabbed one of his few unbroken pencils and began _doodling on his scratch paper_. He was about to tell her to stop and give those back when he began to recognize the shapes she was efficiently scratching out: Lantean circuitry. She was drawing a diagram of the interior workings of this console. A diagram which was, from what he could tell, and he was extremely perceptive, completely to scale.

He was surprised enough that he abandoned what he was doing to watch her.

Once she’d finished, she looked up at him, eyes bright. “The hydrofilaments require a 0.23 millimeter adjustment,” she said patiently, tapping her pencil over. “While your equations are theoretically sound, they don’t compensate for the flux variances in the Firefly’s ignition core and the refractive index of the crystalline control mechanism.”  
She grinned.

And, as he studied the diagram he’d been handed, Rodney realized with a sinking feeling in his stomach that she was right. Oh, that was completely unfair. Rodney had missed it, and he’d been working with Lantean technology for four years: River had seen this circuitry for approximately five minutes. “How did you--?”

Without warning, she reached over and grabbed the diagram, crumpling it up in her hand.  
“What are you doing?” he yelped.

“The colors are ugly,” she said loudly, unballing the paper and recrumpling it. “Brown and blue. Needs to go, the oil on the water is burning.”

Her hands tightened around the creased paper, and with a flash of reflexive panic from being on the receiving end of that move during too many of his sister’s childhood temper tantrums, Rodney snatched at it before River could rip it in two.

“Wasn’t someone supposed to keep her under control?” he snapped at the bewildered Simon. River buried her face in Simon’s shoulder. “It’s too bright,” she moaned, and Simon tightened an arm around her in response.

“It’s all right, Meimei,” he said, stroking her hair with his free hand. “Come on, sit with me.” Rodney tried to focus back on his work, but reluctantly kept River’s new plan in his head.

He became aware, after a few minutes, that River had fallen asleep, which was completely ridiculous at this time of day, and Simon was watching him, a strange wistfulness coloring his features. Rodney tried to ignore him, but there was only so much any reasonable person could take: after fifteen minutes straight of being stared at, he finally broke. “What?” he snapped.

Simon flinched back at his vehemence, but did not move besides that. “I haven’t seen her do that since she got sick,” he said quietly. “Our last class together was electronic engineering. She could always dance circles around me.”

“Oh,” Rodney said, remembering the profound hope and relief on Jeannie’s face when he had fully emerged from his parasite-induced Alzheimer's. Uncomfortably, he bent back over his equations, but within a few minutes he was fully absorbed again, because honestly, who thought putting the coolant coil _there_ was a good idea?

All in all, integrating the systems took less than two hours. Once they got underway to the drop coordinates, he hovered anxiously for two more hours before John quietly put a hand on his shoulder and told him to cool it, the power levels were holding fine.

\---

“This,” Rodney said, flopping down on the mattress and staring up at the ceiling of the bedroom, “is the weirdest galaxy I have ever been to.”

John was sprawled on the spare cot across the room. It made maneuvering in the cramped room difficult, but John had made it clear he wasn’t willing to leave Rodney unguarded, and Rodney had wanted the company too much to complain much.

“Weirder than man-eating bug men?” asked John.

Rodney waved his hands dismissively, deliberately not looking over his shoulder to catch the smirk he imagined John was sending his way. "It’s one thing for this to be a space rodeo, every galaxy seems to breed its fair share of hicks, but..."

He looked over at John, who looked back without seeming to move much. And didn't say anything.

"Rodney?"

"It's Kaylee," Rodney said. "Kaylee looks just like Jennifer. Except she doesn’t, you know? All her mannerisms are different, all of her priorities, not to mention that ridiculous accent.”

“I like her.”

“Jennifer?”

“Kaylee,” John said. “Not that I have any problem with Jennifer.”

“Well, of course, you would like Kaylee. Kirk.” He would not feel jealous of his alternate-galaxy girlfriend and his best friend. Or confused about which one he was more jealous of.

“Hey!” John protested. “I didn’t even flirt with her.”

“Oh come on, I know all the talk about engines and piloting mechanisms is foreplay for you.”

“Look, buddy, I wouldn’t mess with anyone you were dating,” and Rodney was surprised by the seriousness in his tone.

“Yes, well.” Rodney settled back onto his elbows, feeling slightly guilty for making John say anything serious at all. It was as out of character as Rodney socializing with psychiatrists.

It had really been a long day.

“What do you like about her?” John’s voice came unexpectedly out of the low light. “I always wondered.”

“Funny, most people would be asking what she sees in me.” John, typically enough, didn’t say anything. “She’s smart, surprisingly competent, encourages me in my success. Not to mention she’s got a great—“

“Smile,” John finished, and Rodney could faintly see his grin.

“Well, yes, that too. Why do you ask?”

“No particular reason,” Sheppard said, and the immediateness of his response made Rodney suspicious.

“Oh, don’t give me that, you never ask anything without a reason. That would mean talking more than is absolutely necessary, and I’d have to take that square off your Bingo board.”

There was a chuckle, but that was all.

“Come on, you’re my friend, right?” Rodney hated how uncertain his voice sounded. “Be straight with me. Friends tell each other what’s on their minds.”

Sheppard was silent for a long, long time. Then, finally, he said, “She likes you a lot.”

“That’s not an answer,” Rodney said.

“Well, what do you want me to say?” Sheppard sounded a little frustrated. “You two are weird together. I never got it, that’s all.”

“Weird?”

“She makes you all nervous. Like you need to be any more nervous. You make her nervous too.”

“Excuse me, I do not make her nervous! I make her laugh. Sometimes at me, granted, but… she has many fine qualities!” Unbidden, he thought of his pang of confused guilt at Kaylee’s bright, guileless smile.

“Look, you asked.” Sheppard sank back against the wall.

“You’re just jealous,” he huffed, before it hit him that _oh my God, he might be jealous_. He leaned forward to study Sheppard more closely, though it was hard in the dim lighting and through his rising sense of hope.

“Huh?” Sheppard said.

“It’s the only thing that makes sense,” Rodney said accusingly. “Why else wouldn’t you say anything about all the reservations you’ve apparently had about my girlfriend for always?”

“Maybe, Rodney,” in the tone of voice that implied _you idiot_ , “I don’t tell my friends who they should and shouldn’t date.” Sheppard was looking down, the way he did when he didn’t want Rodney to know something important, oh God Rodney couldn’t be reading this right. “I’m not the kind of asshole who... I let my friends make their own choices, mistakes, whatever.” And Rodney wasn’t imagining it, he looked flushed, guilty, like he was holding something back.

“No, you’re not that kind of asshole, I know.” Rodney said, hardly able to believe his luck, especially today of all days. “Sheppard. Look at me.”

After a few unwilling moments, John looked up at him, not quite meeting his eyes. Rodney’s heart was speeding in his chest.

“You’re really not,” he said sincerely. And he closed the few centimeters of distance between them and pressed their mouths together.

 _Warm, needs chapstick_ was all he had time to fully register before John pressed hands against his shoulders and shoved hard. Rodney stumbled back several paces, mind reeling, and crashed into a carefully arranged stack of storage crates.

“What the hell, McKay?” Sheppard said, eyes wide and frantic.

Rodney opened and closed his mouth several times on a response. “I should hope that it’s obvious,” he said finally.

“You’re on my _team_ , McKay.” Sheppard’s was speaking loudly and harshly and it hurt Rodney’s ears. “You can’t have that kind of—“

“Kissing?”

“Of _relationship_ if you’re on the same team!” Sheppard’s voice was rising now, he was almost shouting, something Rodney had never heard before. From others, plenty: never from Sheppard. “In the field you’re making split-second decisions with people’s lives. Those kind of complications kill people, they make you take stupid pointless risks—“

“Oh, you’re one to talk about pointless risks!”

“And even if you weren’t on my team, I thought you knew me well enough to know that I _don’t go that way_.”

For the first time since Sheppard pushed Rodney away, they were both silent. Sheppard was breathing hard, and Rodney could feel his mouth gaping in disbelief.

“You can’t be serious!”

“Rodney—“

“You were just saying you were jealous of Jennifer!” he sputtered.

“No, I wasn’t,” said Sheppard. “I definitely was saying she didn’t make you happy. When you asked me to be _straight_ with you.”

“But... all of the flirting!”

“What flirting?” John demanded.

“Taking breakfast earlier to talk to me, bringing me coffee when I didn’t show up to breakfast, drinking with me on the pier, hell, the Bingo cards about all the little things you noticed about me—”

Sheppard stilled suddenly and horribly. Rodney had seen him do this a hundred times when he woke up in strange surroundings: carefully controlled breathing, muscles deliberately relaxed, doing his best not to reveal anything he was thinking or feeling, and he began to feel sick to his stomach. “Is that what you thought the games were about?” John said quietly, almost inaudibly. “Is that why you were going along with them?”

When Rodney didn’t respond, John’s eyes darkened. He pressed himself clumsily to his knees and reached over to his tac vest and pulled out two well-creased pieces of paper.

“You don’t owe me any ice cream,” he said precisely. “I am going to go sleep in the cargo bay, and we are never, ever going to talk about this again.”

Almost afraid to look, Rodney picked up the piece of paper. One of them was the official Sheppard Bingo board. On the other was not just the official Rodney Bingo board, but another one right alongside.

 _Finding me a cool new Ancient toy. Drinking beer with me after a lousy day. Going whale-watching. Fixing the motor on the racecar._ About half of the squares were marked—it looked like Sheppard was about one short of a bingo on both boards.

It was, Rodney began to realize, a board full of little kindnesses that he hadn’t noticed, that he hadn’t realized he was offering.

Kindnesses any decent friend would repay with kindnesses of their own. Kindnesses Sheppard had noticed, even when Rodney himself didn’t.

Rodney finally found his voice again. “Sheppard!” He cleared his throat of its unexpected lump and tried to breathe. It didn’t work as well as he would have liked. “John?”

There was no reply.

\---

Five minutes later, River showed up and, without a word, tucked her skirts under her and curled up on the floor.

“There is absolutely no reason why I shouldn’t kick you out right now,” Rodney grumbled halfheartedly from his place under the blankets. “You’ll probably stab me in my sleep if I let you stay.”

“Legend tells that a spectral cat haunts the wetlands,” River said solemnly, not shifting from her fetal position. “Close morphological study of the swamp indicated a two point five percent concentration of diatomaceous cheskiratol. It has hallucinogenic properties.”

For some reason that Rodney would never be able to explain, he found the words comforting. “Shhh,” he said, and leaned back against the mattress. “Go to sleep.”

“Makes you angry,” she said. “Confused. They put needles in you.”

“Well, I’m going to sleep anyway. Join me if you want.” If she stabbed him in his sleep, he thought, turning over on his suddenly hard mattress, it would serve him right, anyway.


	6. Chapter 6

The next three days were awful, even though he woke up alive and un-stabbed. No one else seemed to notice anything out of the ordinary, and to be fair, if he didn’t know Sheppard as well as he did, he wouldn’t either. The man was still all smiles and controlled tension and stupid leaning. But he didn’t make any jokes—actually, he didn’t say anything at all to Rodney that wasn’t about the heist—and he carefully stepped away whenever Rodney was closer than five feet away.

Rejection was one thing, he knew rejection, he and rejection were old drinking buddies. And he may have said things slightly undiplomatically, but to be fair, John had surprised him with the whole not being gay thing. Point was, they were on the same team, and Sheppard wasn’t even trying to be professional: he was saving face when the others were around to keep the rest of the team together, but he was acting like Rodney wasn’t even on his team anymore. He’d been rejected, he’d been rejected worse—more than once with restraining orders—but never so _unfairly._

Rodney left a note on the pilot’s chair of the jumper-- _if you think that knowing you means nothing to me, then you lied about MENSA, you’re more of a colossal idiot than anyone I’ve met, let alone worked with_ \-- and went back to his room and bit furiously into one of the few remaining PowerBars.

But there was a mission to execute, so instead of avoiding John the way he wanted, he found himself crowded together with him and the Firefly crew in the cockpit, everyone but Mal just out of sight of the visual input.

The viewscreen flickered on, revealing a dark-eyed woman of indeterminate age. She blinked at them and said nothing.

“Tera.” Mal stepped forward, smiling. Rodney found himself idly theorizing about the gender breakdown of the Browncoat Army, with Mal and the two women as anecdotal evidence. It was a completely ridiculous thing to be thinking about, but he let himself, because it was better than thinking about Sheppard.

“Malcolm,” the woman on the viewscreen said, voice solemn and strangely rough.

“Told you a million times, it’s Mal.”

“And I have told you as many times to change it.” Now, for the first time, there was a hint of a smile, though her eyes were still serious. “You should be elsewhere. Most hunted men would be more sensible.”

“So you heard about the posters.”

“They are on every channel,” she said. “Not a good likeness.”

“That’s what I been saying!” Jayne exclaimed.

“You have been neglecting your covert operations practice. A disgrace to my training,” the woman continued, ignoring Jayne.

“You always say that,” Mal said cheerfully. “Stealth is what I got Zoe for.”

“More’s the pity.” If anything, her frown deepened.

“Anyway,” Mal said, “we’re here on account of we ain’t welchers. New friend brought us tech so the Alliance can’t sense us, cargo’s here and untagged, just as we promised.”

“New stealth technology?”

“Might even let you see it, you ask real nice,” he said. “And there’s an interesting part. Our new friend might be able to bring that old terraformer back to life. He wants to have a look at the source.”

Tera seemed to look past them, somehow, into the distance.

“Unacceptable,” she said finally, tensely glancing back at the screen. “There is too much risk. You should leave.”

“I just finished telling you there’s no risk. Can’t nobody track us.”

“I will not share Browncoat history with outsiders.”

“I owe them, too,” Mal said. “Goods wouldn’t be here without their aid.”

“Your debt to them is meaningless to me,” Tera said, voice retaining its harsh edge. “Go.”

“Tera,” Mal looked slightly exasperated, but not overly surprised by the sudden about-face. “This obviously ain’t one of your good days, but we had a fair deal and ain’t no reason to renegotiate it. You owe us. We come back when you’re well, the cargo’ll be no good to anyone. Besides, you want to see the digger work much as I do.”

Mal and Tera stared at one another hard.

She was the first to look away from the camera. “I can do nothing to dissuade you.”

“Nope.”

She sighed. “I never can,” she said, disappointment and reluctance clear in her voice. “Docking port 302 is open. I will meet you in the bay. And Mal?

“Yes?”

“I am sorry for your difficulties.” And that sentence carried more emotion with it than anything else the woman had said. She really _was_ crazy.

“Don’t you worry about that,” Mal said, good humor restored. “Just sit tight, we’ll have your cargo to you in a matter of hours.”

The connection terminated.

“Is she always like that?” John asked before Rodney could.

“Yep,” said Mal. “On bad days, anyway. You aiming to join me anytime soon?”

 

\---

 

The bay was unexpectedly dark and silent when they opened the Firefly’s doors.

“Zoe, Wash, Kaylee,” Mal said over his shoulder again, “you mind the ship. This shouldn’t take long.”

“ _Haode_.” Wash said.

“Sir.” Zoe’s voice was even.

“You know she’s got no fondness for you,” Mal said. “Besides, no one else to defend the ship case she decides to _pohuai_ it while we’re out.”

When they stepped off the ship, the station’s lights were flickering, casting shadows through the hall. Rodney could barely see fifty feet. Out of the corner of his eye, Rodney could see Sheppard’s hand creep towards the gun.

Mal’s didn’t do the same, which was jarring to Rodney, who’d begun to view them as equally paranoid. In fact, Mal looked surprisingly eager. “Does this every time,” he explained at Rodney’s baffled look. “When that woman tells me to practice covert ops, she means to _make_ me practice.”

“Meaning?”

“Watch your back.”

“This is your _friend_?” Rodney knew he was repeating himself, but really.

“We go way back,” Mal said. “Now hush.” He flattened himself against the wall and motioned to them to follow. At least, that’s what Rodney thought the motion meant.

“I am never working with you again,” Rodney grumbled, but he joined them against the wall.

In retrospect, it was a mistake to go in front, because when they rounded the next corner, someone--a whiskery, used-car-salesman type in an ugly bowler hat--was pointing a gun at Rodney for the third time since he’d left Atlantis.

"Badger." Rodney could see Mal tense up. "Tera don’t usually contract with the likes of you.”

"Seriously? Your name is Badger?" The words came out of Rodney's mouth before he could stop himself: he briefly considered and discarded the idea of a truth serum, since he'd always had this problem. "No wonder you're in this line of work: playgrounds must have been hell for you as a child." In retrospect, Rodney had resented the fact that his own classmates could only come up with 'Oddney' to insult him. He merited a little more creativity.

Badger waved the gun at him. “Who’s this one, then?”

“No business of yours,” Mal said smoothly. “Tera, you can come out now. You made your point.”

There was no reply.

Mal turned back to Badger, finally dropping a hand just beside his hip in that painfully familiar posture. Rodney did not turn to Sheppard to compare, but it was a near thing. "Just don't make me listen to you... saying any words.”

As if on cue, the echo of clicking footsteps began down the hall. Badger, true to Mal’s request, said nothing, but kept the gun pointed at them.

“About damn time,” Mal muttered, straightening his shoulders.

Rodney, inappropriately, was starting to feel a little dizzy, which meant another hypoglycemic episode was coming on, which was not the right thing to happen when a crazed war veteran was approaching. He looked down at his tac vest and began rummaging for another PowerBar.

Except he couldn’t see the vest right, it was all blurry, and he was starting to feel heavy and numb. He opened his mouth to warn Sheppard, warn Mal, something, but nothing would come out. As he slid to the ground, he was faintly aware of the others doing the same. Except Badger, of course. Badger was still standing there with that stupid oily smile on his face.

When the fog of knockout gas cleared the room, the woman walked in, heels clicking against the cold floor. She tilted her head and smiled.

"Hello, boys," Saffron said to the unconscious bodies.


	7. Chapter 7

"...know that anticipation is half the fun, sweetheart,” was the first thing Rodney heard on regaining consciousness.

“They’re dancing.” River was whispering to him-- or at least, he thought it was River, and thought she was whispering. His head was still swimming. And his neck ached. “They know all the steps.”

“Where’s the weasel, Saffron?” Mal's voice was quiet, grim, and seemed to be coming from a distance. Rodney flexed his hands, something dancing frenetically on the edges of his memory. “Suppose you spaced him.”

“Course not.” He definitely didn't recognize the woman's young, teasing voice, which meant it probably belonged to... _oh._

That's what he was forgetting. He should be tied up. Actually, Rodney had never been more surprised not to wake up in chains, other than that one time with his ex-girlfriend in college.

He opened his eyes.

And for a moment, thought for sure he was hallucinating again, because the padded leather cuffs on his arms and legs were a little unexpected, especially given they weren't actually attached to anything. And he seemed to be propped sideways against the table in the mess hall, which explained the neckache.

“Badger got a grand sendoff in Tera’s escape pod," the voice continued: Rodney turned his head towards it and winced. The injury was probably serious, he needed to get it treated as soon as this was over. "He was unconscious at the time, but believe me, he’ll thank me later. If he makes it planetside, that is.”

His vision cleared again to show Mal propped next to him-- not as far away as he'd seemed, then-- and the hottest woman he had ever seen standing above him. Blonde, curvy... something was still wrong.

“What day is it?” Rodney said. This was the second time he’d been out cold since arriving in this galaxy, surely enough time had passed that--

“Tuesday," the woman said absently. "Morning, sweetie."

"Oh, _come on_!"

She looked at him properly, then, for the first time since he was awake, and smiled. “The new kids are awfully cute, Mal. Passengers?”

“Got a moratorium on passengers,” Mal said. Rodney could feel his voice vibrating through the table. “Last one took advantage of our hospitality.”

“Oh, you wish I had." She sat down next to them. "Where's your right hand and the preacher man, Mal?"

"Sabbatical," Mal said, "and I believe it’s around to you again. Where’s Tera?”

“Her I spaced. Couldn’t be helped.”

Rodney looked at Mal, who looked disturbingly unruffled. “Never figured you for a murderer, Saffron."

Ah. Mal's voice was a little hoarse, which, in Sheppard parlance, meant he was practically crying-- _Sheppard_. Rodney snapped his head around, ignoring the pain.

He was there, curled around a storage crate, and Rodney allowed himself a moment of unmitigated relief before looking back to the kidnapper (why were the kidnappers always the hot ones?)

She didn't look as self-satisfied now. "Believe me, Mal, it was kinder than any other option left after the display she pulled," she said. "But are my manners? I haven’t given my husband a proper hello."

Before Mal could say anything, and before even Rodney had time to process _husband?_ , Saffron leaned forward and kissed Mal. Passionately. With a lot of tongue.

His response was to swing a punch at her face.

"Are you out of your _mind_?" Rodney yelped. He wasn't really in the mood to be knocked unconscious again and woken up in another cargo bay because of someone else's _suicidal idiocy_. Besides, if a kidnapper had to assault him, he'd rather it be one this hot, and then he was thinking about one of Ford's goons kissing him with that much tongue and his train of thought ran off the tracks into a pit of nausea filled with a swamp of disgust.

To his surprise, Saffron didn't duck out of the way of the punch-- just touched her wrist, like that would help protect her.

To his complete astonishment, Saffron then lifted one arm and _stopped the punch with her bare hand_.

Mal's arm went completely limp, but Saffron didn't let go. She smiled and tossed her hair back, apparently unfazed by the feat. "Hey," she said, "It's what I do."

“Huh,” said Rodney.

Mal shook his arm as if it had been stung, apparently trying to pull it out of Saffron's grip. “What in the hell—“

“Baohu,” she said, still smiling widely. “Electrostim cuffs. They run a little stimulation there…” she turned Mal’s hand over and traced a delicate line along his wrist, “and there,” another line along the upper curve of his forearm. “which, as you’ve noticed, makes it a little bit tougher to fight me off.” She batted her eyelashes at him. “Some men like being completely helpless in a strong woman’s clutches.”

“Oh my God,” Rodney realized, “they are BDSM cuffs.”

“Reminds me of Leren,” Sheppard muttered to the floor, and of course the first thing he would say would be to taunt Rodney.

“Oh, shut up,” Rodney snapped, and Sheppard looked like he was about to reply when a panel on the wall beeped.

“Ah," said Saffron, "There are my boys, right on schedule.” She crossed the room and flipped the panel open.

“Boys?” Mal rasped. “Husbands three hundred fifty three and three hundred fifty four?”

So, a corner of Rodney’s mind gibbered, an insane serial monogamist had them wrapped in BDSM cuffs and was about to turn them over to her husbands.

He really, really hated Tuesdays.

“Please.” Saffron rested one palm on her right hip. “You underestimate me.”

“You do lend yourself to that.”

“Why, Mal,” she fluttered, “I didn’t know you cared.” Her smile broadened into a grin before she turned back to the intercom, clearing her throat. “Good evening.”

“The captives have been incapacitated?” It was one of the harsh, cold voices from the jumper’s speakers. Rodney felt sick with recognition.

“They have,” only this wasn't the Saffron they'd just been speaking to, flirtatious with an edge of danger. This woman was emotionless and efficient. “I have rendered them harmless and immobile. I await further instructions.” On the last words, she leaned forward, and her voice took on just a hint of tenderness. Then, just quickly, she stepped back and stiffened her shoulders, as if caught in a momentary lapse.

Not even his method acting teacher had been this good.

“Return to the ship,” said the same voice. “My colleague will dock the shuttlecraft. We will give you further instructions upon your return."

“Understood. Bernadette out.” She clapped the panel closed.

“Anyway, sorry to cut this short,” she said, suddenly and disconcertingly sweet, “but you know how it goes. People to meet, places to see, bounties to collect.”

“You’re _Alliance_?” Mal sounded more surprised than Rodney would have expected, given the circumstances.

“Me? Not so much.” Beside her, Jayne groaned and rolled over onto his back. “But my boys are. Anyway, it doesn’t matter, you’ll get to meet them soon enough.” She waved her hand at him cheerily. “Bye, sweetie. We’ll be in touch.” She paused in the doorway. “Or not.”

\---

Inara sat up as soon as she left the room.

“Didn’t figure you were still sleeping.” Mal said. “Now--”

“They have passcodes,” Inara said.

“Pardon?”

“The cuffs,” she said, in a tone that bordered on impatient but never crossed over. “They’re Companion tools, not weapons, so they have passcodes to keep us from crossing client boundaries. Say the right word and they’ll fall off.”

Rodney pulled the life-signs detector out of his pocket and started scanning, because... “Then why wouldn’t she tie us up?” he said. There was only one dot, and it had to be Zoe, though the God that clearly didn’t exist right now knew why she wasn’t trapped here with the rest of them. “As a precaution. Since you know what you’re doing.”

“She thinks it’s funny,” Simon said.

“They love dancing,” River said, bringing a hand to her face. “Spinning in circles.”

“Saffron’s overconfident,” Inara said. “She likes a challenge, and she doesn’t think we’ll guess.”

“Wine. Marriage. Seduction. Mouth. Poison. Pistol.” Mal paused. “Trash?”

“And she’s completely right, because some of us have extremely literal minds,” Inara continued. “Never mind the passcodes.”

Rodney abandoned the detector briefly to stared at Mal instead. “What the hell did you do to that woman?”

“You’re a communications expert, right?” Inara threaded her fingers together in a somehow imploring gesture. “There are plenty of ships in this sector. Call for help.” Oh, of course, everything was _his_ responsibility now.

“You crazy?” Jayne growled. “Alliance is on our tail!”

“The Alliance’s already got us dead to rights. And I don’t believe these men are after a payday, so emphasis on dead.”

“In other words, it doesn’t matter if they catch us this time,” Simon said patiently. “Given that we’re already in their custody.”

Jayne paused and thought for a while.

At least the stupid commentary wasn't his responsibility. “If you expect me to do all your jobs for you,” Rodney began, “then I suggest--”

“Oh,” said Jayne finally.

“Emergency comm’s to the left, Rodney.” Kaylee gestured weakly from her curled position on the floor.

“Right.” He snapped his fingers and braced himself to slide off the table towards it.

The comm was a simple transmitter, probably about 40,000 watts ERP, antenna so corroded that the transmitter shouldn’t even be able to generate a radio frequency alternating current, but the important part was that it did. It was omnidirectional, though, he’d have to isolate the frequencies he didn’t want to broadcast on, which meant...

“Sorry about this,” he muttered, half to himself, and turned the transmitter on—receiving, not transmitting, until he could pinpoint the station.

“...in the cargo bay with the others.” Saffron’s voice crackled over the intercom.

“What,” Sheppard’s voice was so hostile that Rodney’s hands twitched in a completely irrational attempt to protect his face,“in the hell are you doing?”

“They can’t hear us, Colonel,” he snapped back. “Unless you want them to know we’ve got a working communication system on hand, give me a moment.”

“Have you seen this girl?”

A thud sounded, eerily close by. Rodney grabbed his lifesigns detector-- still no one outside, just the one dot, which still hadn’t moved.

“Affirmative,” Saffron said, sounding still reserved, but puzzled. “She is with the rest of the captives. Do you require further assistance with her disposal?”

“No.” There was a moment of silence, then a click, like something being set down on the comm.

Saffron screamed.

It was a horrible scream, more agonized than a Wraith victim, the sound of someone being turned inside-out and pulled apart and all their bones pulverized. It went on and on and on and on and-- Rodney slammed the comm button off, breathing heavily.

Sheppard was the first one to speak, this time more gently. “C’mon, we’ve gotta—“

There was a hiss as the bay door opened to reveal a thin, balding man staring at them calmly, almost blankly. The man was dressed in a sharply pressed suit and, incongruously, a pair of latex gloves.

“They dance together.” River said into the silence. “Two by two.”


	8. Chapter 8

Nothing happened next, all at once.

Things tried to happen, obviously, the Firefly crew had enough common sense to realize when you had no weapons and were faced with a murderer, you ran. With the possible exceptions of Mal, for stupid nobility reasons, and Jayne, for stupid stupidity reasons. But the frantic stampede stopped when Latex Gloves man (the last time he'd been around someone wearing blue latex gloves, they'd given him a prostate exam without asking, latex gloves were _creepy_ ) slid one hand under the sleeve of his suit.

There was a jolt of pain in Rodney's wrists and his ankles-- he tripped, then stumbled to the floor, the lifesigns detector falling from his suddenly twitching hand to land beside him. Around him, almost everyone did the same; Inara dropping in a graceful, practiced way, Mal standing the longest, gritting his teeth, before finally falling. Simon, the unluckiest, stumbled into the table on the way down. The pain resolved to a strange, uncomfortable prickling along Rodney's forearms and calves when he stopped moving.

"You have some stolen property," Latex Gloves man stepped into the mess hall and glanced around, as if taking stock of cargo. "My colleague will be here shortly so we can collect it."

"Didn't steal nothin'," growled Jayne, and grunted again as his leg shifted.

The man just looked down at him. "Your face is being broadcasted everywhere," he said, "but that's not relevant."

"Can't see me if the world is closed." River was almost stage-whispering into the metal of the floor.

"Shhh, meimei," murmured Simon.

"Search us," Mal said, sounding a little weary. "Ain't got nothing in the way of cargo."

"Ah, there you are," the man said over his shoulder, as another blue-gloved (what was with the gloves?) man stepped up behind him: Rodney couldn't see him well, but he was a little shorter than the other one. The first man didn't sound pleased to see his 'colleague,' which gave Rodney even more of the creeps than the gloves had in the first place. "She is here."

"She?" Wash said.

Both of them walked over to where River was face-down on the floor.

"Time to go," the taller one said, as if to a small child.

"Not sleepy," she said, and Rodney got the sense that she would've been curled into the fetal position if she could move. "Didn’t drink the milk, no, no, nononono-"

The man bent over, then lifted her onto his shoulders as if she weighed nothing.

"Meimei!" Simon said, then gave a sudden shout and spasmed. He'd been enough of an idiot to try to move against the electrical stimulation. a _child_ would know what a bad idea that was. Rodney certainly had.

"They've all spoken to her," the taller one said to his colleague, ignoring River's babbling.

The other one shrugged and flipped out a pen. "Remove her from the room." He pressed the pen, which, to Rodney's confusion, clicked open into something halfway between an antenna and the neuralizers from Men in Black.

"Wait," the tall man said, and for the first time his voice sounded something resembling harsh. He extended his free hand towards Rodney, whose confusion blossomed into something like unease.

The shorter man immediately closed the pen, which shouldn’t have mattered, but somehow made Rodney even more uneasy. "Release this one."

"What?" Sheppard's voice startled Rodney: he'd almost forgotten the man was in the room (for the first time since they'd met, maybe).

The taller man reached into his suit again, and the tingling in Rodney's extremities began to fade into hellish cramps.

"You may move," the man said.

Nerves were going to take a backseat to practicality for once in Rodney's life. He tried to lift an arm, but his muscles weren't responding right.

"What are your names, anyway?" Sheppard somehow managed to sound relaxed while curled into a position that shouldn't even have been physically possible, let alone comfortable. Rodney wanted to say to him, don’t, they’re not in your power, you’re just going to antagonize them with your stupid games, but Sheppard continued anyway. “You’ve got to have two names that go together. How about...” He pointed to the taller one, ”Billy,” and to the shorter one, “and Joel?”

And somehow, the stupid names (Bingo-- fourth square from the bottom right) manage to calm Rodney down a little where nothing else had so far. “ _Really_?” he said, trying not to shoot the man a grateful glance. “ _Billy Joel_?”

Sheppard seemed to make an effort to shrug, then winced. “There are only two of them. Three I would’ve named Neil, DeGrasse, and Tyson.”

“He once stole an idea from m--” Sheppard was almost smiling. “Hey! You knew that!” For a brief, surreal moment, it’s like the two of them never had a fight.

Then Rodney’s shoulders were wrenched completely out of alignment as a pair of blue-covered hands dragged him indifferently to his feet.

"Where did you get this?" the man Rodney would always mentally call Billy asked, pointing to-- _oh, shit._ The life-signs detector. "This technology is not Alliance."

“What do you mean? Of course it is.” Rodney heard the edge of a whine in his voice. This wasn’t fair, his acting always got strained under pressure. “It’s a piece of survey equipment meant to measure the barometric pressure to determine whether a settlement is habitable.”

Billy rested one blue-gloved hand against the tablet. “We are Alliance,” he said simply. “This is not. It is a Lantean life-signs detector. Where did you get it?”

For about the thirtieth time today, Rodney was completely speechless. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said helplessly.

The two men looked at him, then at one another, then back at him.

“We require your assistance,” Joel said.

  “What kind of assistance?” John said, nonchalant and deliberately provocative, and Rodney had an instant to feel confusedly grateful to John for trying to take their attention off him before the other one said:

“We will show you.”  

"Yes, well,” panic rising, “that certainly saves us more time than if you were going to have a big speech like a proper villain--"  And then there was a moment of abrupt, splitting, familiar pain as the gloved hand pressed itself into his head.

 _There is no order to the world. They cannot fulfill their purpose. They are without enemy and without creator. Anything else is a distraction._

He was in a laboratory with--were those Ancient scientists?-- who looked about as serious as they had during the solar flare. Behind them he saw the narrow bed where he'd built FRAN.   

Then he was hovering above, far above in the upper atmosphere, only space was swarming with millions of tiny insects. _Nanites_ , his brain told him, and he understood. The replicators were taking over Chaya's home planet. The blue energy weapon hadn’t been enough to protect them. But where was she? Wasn't she supposed to be omnipotent?  

As if in response to his question, all the insects melted, and there was a blue light hovering towards his ship's viewscreen. The light filtered into his body-- he screamed as it burned out circuitry (circuitry?) and command code that had existed from his inception.  

Then he was standing in a swamp filled with tiny green shoots, with a group of what looked like the Chinese people of ancient Earth staring at him in horror and pity. He glanced down at himself-- and he was naked, the Other beside him.

  _They do not feel shame. Shame is a distraction._

 He was taken to the palace. Eunuchs were usually taken to the palace. The Emperor fed and clothed him and gradually came to trust him: how many others among his servants could claim loyalty to none but the Emperor?

Once, in a haze of unfulfilled purpose, he stole and drank one of the Emperor’s immortality potions, but he did not Ascend, or rise to the moon like Chang’e, or even descend into blissfully oblivious madness alongside the Emperor. The Other plotted the Emperor’s overthrow, and he allowed it: the next Emperor might bring them closer to purpose.

 Time sped up, or blurred-- there were more emperors, always more emperors, and always, there were the eunuchs. Always the advisors, but always watching and waiting for someone powerful enough to assist them. Not imprisonment in labor camps during the Cultural Revolution deterred them. And they watched China’s slow economic and technological buildup, watched and advised while the rest of the world sat back in their false superiority and misdirected fear. Then they left the world behind and began an galactic war. There followed a rebellion, quickly quelled. The bloodletting was close to what they needed, but never close enough.

  Then, only then, were there the Hands of Blue.

  They did not work for the Emperor now, but the Alliance. If they held to their promises of loyalty, hunting down anti-Alliance inconveniences, the Alliance would find a way for them to replicate again, to go home, to Ascend.

 _A single phrase: no one can speak to the girl and live._

It hurt them, depending on inferior beings. But in this galaxy, only the Alliance could even begin to understand the technology to make them what they were. Until now. Until the return of the Lanteans.  

And then Rodney was himself again, abruptly. An overwhelming sense of loss and violation made him trip and stumble to earth, life-signs detector slamming against his side with a bruising thud. His limbs all felt weak, the sights and smells were too intense, and he clutched his stomach in a desperate attempt not to throw up.   "Rodney?" an anxious voice said. He lost it entirely, rolling over onto his stomach and and retching the contents of his stomach onto the floor. "Rodney!"

“You will cooperate,” said the first man—replicator, and it felt like it was inside his head still. “Or you will die. We will allow thirty minutes for you to consider. Release the others.”

Rodney had barely heard the footsteps recede when gentle hands eased him over onto his left side-- _keeps you from suffocating_ , he remembered hysterically. His world was reduced to shaking and nausea.

It took what felt like an eternity before anything around him started to coalesce into reality, and even longer for him to be able to form words. "I'm..." he croaked. Everything was raw, everything ached, the life-signs detector may have bruised his kidney. "I'm all right." He wiped his mouth, which tasted like vomit and salt and copper. "For now. But we're screwed." He swallowed, throat protesting raggedly, and propped himself up on one arm. "They're replicators. That can’t replicate. And they want me to rewrite their base code to solve that little problem."

“In _putonghua_?” Mal asked.

"Sheppard," Rodney said wearily, trying to convey _I don't care how much you hate me, I do not have the energy to explain this, you do it_ in his vocal tone.

Somehow, it worked.


	9. Chapter 9

“So we shoot ‘em.” Jayne said.

“I wish.” Rodney sighed and propped himself upright. “Like he said, bullets won’t do anything to them.”

“So what do we do?” Mal asked.

“Rodney’s the expert,” Sheppard said, an edge to his voice. _Unfair_ , Rodney thought, gritting his teeth against a new surge of nausea. Sheppard had touched him when he was a curling, vomiting mess, but apparently now that he wasn’t going to die the Colonel didn’t want anything to do with him.

At least he was feeling well enough to be upset.

“Well, the standard anti-replicator weapon is an EM pulse with a frequency modulator to disrupt the bonds between nanites.” He fought back the impulse to look to Sheppard for confirmation: it was automatic by now, but pointless if Sheppard wouldn’t look back. Instead he craned his (still stiff) neck at Kaylee, who stared back at him with a completely bewildered look on her face. So, for that matter, did the rest of the Firefly crew.

Before he could open his mouth to explain, River piped up from her huddle in the corner. “Water in a squirtgun dissolves a sugar cube.”

There was a pause.

“I understood that,” Jayne said. “So we shoot ‘em.”

“That a mite terrifying to anyone else?” Mal asked.

Rodney wished he could get up and pace-- he always thought better when he was pacing. “Even if by some strange coincidence we had the equipment to generate an EM pulse of that frequency, which we don’t, they know they’re vulnerable. Or did you miss the part where they looked into my head?”

“At least it’s an idea,” Sheppard said, and Rodney actually found himself clenching a fist. Which was idiotic, Sheppard could take him apart with one punch. “We don’t have a replicator maker and a bunch of bombs, and this idea worked before.”

“We don’t need anything complicated,” Rodney snapped. “Chaya stripped them of all but their most basic protocols, and they’re not capable of dynamic programming in the same way our replicators are. They won’t adapt quickly enough to be a threat.” Because Rodney hadn’t rewritten their base code, thus allowing them to rewrite it themselves, but he wasn’t about to tell the Firefly crew that.

“So what can we do?”

“Get them into space,” Rodney said immediately. “It worked with Niam, that is, until he unfroze and the replicators reprogrammed him, and they can’t program themselves to anticipate something like that.”

“So we shoot ‘em, then we push ‘em out,” Jayne said.

Rodney shot him a look. “I don’t think you’re quite understanding the… anything I’ve ever told you.”

“Also,” John pointed out, “we don’t have guns.”

“Yes, yes, no guns or range of motion.” Rodney drew a breath, counted to five, then waved vaguely in the direction of the crew. “No matter what the Colonel might say,” _careful, Rodney,_ “and much as I’m sorry that this is the case, you’re the experts here. Anything that I know, the replicators can anticipate. I’m not familiar with the station or the ship, and they can anticipate anything we’ve used on them before. How can we get the replicators into space?”

“Got an airlock,” Mal volunteered, and Jayne gave him a _look_ that Rodney couldn’t interpret. “Bridge is up the hall from the mess, no great difficulty to open it from there, long as the crew are safe.” He leaned over and picked up the lifesigns detector. “Which of these are Billy and Joel?”

“They don’t appear on the lifesigns detector,” said Rodney. “They’re nanites, made of inorganic material. Sentient, but not alive. That group,” he gestured to the cluster of dots, "is us."

River shrieked, and they whipped around to see her standing by the door to the front hallway.

“Needles,” she said. Her arm was hanging unusually limp.

Experimentally, Rodney stepped over to the door and reached out a hand: sure enough, he felt the same uncomfortable, tingling pain in his wrist from before. So apparently now the crew couldn’t walk through the door, that explained why the replicators had just left them there. How programmable _were_ these things? (Why was he even wondering? They were BDSM cuffs. Sexually frustrated people were infinitely creative, he should know.)

Rodney sighed. “All right. Obviously,” he gestured at the cuffs, “none of us can leave. Where’s the auxillary control panel?”

This silence was even more deafening than when he’d tried to explain anti-replicator weapons.

“Ain’t one in the mess,” Kaylee said, finally. “Never had a need.”

“Oh my God,” he said, finally shutting his eyes and letting despair roll over him. “I’m surrounded by idiots.”

There was a click. Rodney opened his eyes to find that Mal’s cuffs had fallen off.

 _Idiots?_ That... that wasn’t even funny, those were worse encryption protocols than _LiveJournal_. Predictably enough, though, Jayne began laughing anyway. “Now that ain’t too flattering,” he said between guffaws.

Inara had her blank, neutral smile on, but Rodney suspected she’d be laughing too if she weren’t trained not to. “Well,” she said, “there’s that problem solved.”

Mal, on the other hand, should have looked mutinous, or elated, but didn’t. “That other dot,” he said. “That was Zoe?”

“Unless there’s someone else on board, yes.”

“We ain’t opening the airlock while she’s out there,” Mal said.

“And how do you propose we get her?” Rodney snapped. “Given that she's in the same direction Pinky and the Brain just went, and in case you haven’t noticed, it’s not exactly easy to distract them.”

“We’re not leaving Zoe behind. That’s final.”

“I might have an idea.” Simon reached into his pocket to pull out a pair of syringes.

“Epinephrine,” he said to their questioning looks. “Dr. McKay mentioned that he had some allergies severe enough to cause anaphylaxis. Until I could be certain he wasn’t allergic to anything in the rations, I thought it was best to carry them around on my person as a precaution.”

“Now you tell me?” Rodney said, outraged.

“The hydrozapam in cold storage will be losing its effectiveness,” Simon said, ignoring him, “but it should still be effective enough.”

“For?” Sheppard said.

“This much epinephrine would induce tachycardia, probably cardiac arrest. Enough to be a distraction.”

“Did you not just hear the part where we’re not dealing with human beings here? Epinephrine won’t do anything to them.”

“It’s not for them,” Simon said.

Rodney was aware that his mouth had dropped open, but he couldn’t seem to help himself. River swung her legs down from her perch at the table and stared at Rodney in return.

“So your idea is for all of us to die,” Sheppard said flatly. “That doesn’t seem like a very good plan.”

“Not die. Just sleep.” River sounded distant.

“Only one of us, actually.” Simon said. “There’s only enough here to induce one heart attack.”

Rodney finally found his voice again. “Let me rephrase, that is a _completely terrible_ plan,” Rodney’s hands were shaking, he was definitely getting hypoglycemic. “What is _wrong_ with you, Dr. Kevorkian?”

“It’s Tam,” Simon said.

“Man’s got a point,” Mal said. “For a doctor, you do seem awfully set on killing.”

“McKay said we needed a distraction,” Simon said stubbornly. “The hydrozapam we have in storage would neutralize the effects of the epinephrine.”

“ _No_.” Rodney had learned not to mix stimulants and depressants after his first semester sophomore year of college, when he had 70 pages worth of final papers to write in a week. He _still_ couldn’t figure out why he’d written ‘UFO’ all over an entire crate of paper plates. “Best case scenario, we get one of them to stop guarding us, not both, they’re not stupid. And how did you propose we get to the hydrozapam?"

Simon opened his mouth as if to reply, then pursed his lips. “I’d be happy to listen to other proposals.”

“You said they can’t program themselves,” Kaylee said. “Could you program them, maybe make them leave us alone?”

“Of course I can program them, that’s what they’re counting--” Except that even though they knew Rodney was capable of reprogramming them at will, they were giving him access to their base code. They probably remembered that the last time he’d frozen them, it had only lasted a matter of minutes, and since he couldn’t remove any of the crew’s cuffs, four minutes shouldn’t have been enough time to enact any kind of solution. Besides, Rodney hadn’t thought reprogramming them was an option so they probably wouldn’t be expecting it.

From the vastly entertained look on River’s face, probably all of this was coming through in his expression.

“Why didn’t _I_ think of that?” he said, and the door hissed open.

Or rather, it didn’t just hiss, like the doors in Atlantis, it rasped. To Rodney, it might as well have been nails on chalkboard, or something less trite, like Schoenberg.

“We're ready.” Billy stepped through the door, adjusting his suit.

Rodney was suddenly, acutely aware of the fact that Kaylee had stopped breathing and Mal’s hand was twitching towards the empty holster on his waist. They’d all seen Mal’s cuffs fall off. They’d all been involved in the planning. If the replicators looked into any of their heads...

Joel made a face like he would have frowned if he knew how to remove the serene smile from his face. “Why are you shaking?”

“I need food, sugar, quickly,” he said, adrenaline-edged, thankful for his acting lessons. The replicators knew he was hypoglycemic, he could use that. “If you expect me to help you, that is.”

“You will assist us, then.” Billy said. It wasn’t a question.

“Do I have any kind of choice?” He deliberately crossed his arms. “Get me something to eat. Then we’ll talk.”

“Come with us,” Joel said, “and we will give you food.”

And it was risky, but... “Fine, but I have to pick up supplies in the cargo bay,” he said, “so the plan can go ahead as scheduled.” From Mal’s absolute deadpan, he guessed the message had gotten through.

Billy pushed a button on his sleeve, again, and motioned Rodney through the door.

\---

He ate the reconstituted protein Joel brought him. He had to: he hadn’t been completely lying, his mood was all over the place, he was getting lightheaded, his nerves were fraying through even more sugar that usual. It wasn’t the same protein the Firefly crew had on board, though. And since the replicators didn’t have to eat, this had been food they had stored for Saffron.

Ironically, the knowledge made his stomach hurt.

He kept working through the stomachache, plastered to the pilot seat of the jumper: there was no telling the next time Billy and Joel were going to decide to stick a hand into his head.

The sound of footsteps threw him out of his reverie. He looked up to see Billy and Joel standing in the doorway, which wasn’t so unexpected, they’d been checking on his progress incessantly for the last hour, but between them...

“Sheppard?” Rodney nearly dropped his tablet again.

Sheppard shrugged, eyeing the floor, which translated in Sheppard-speak to _I resent you but don’t want to make the effort of explaining why._ “Motivation, they said.”

Rodney winced, turning back to the console. Sheppard resenting him made perfect sense, then, for once. If someone had taken him out of a reasonably safe place where he was organizing a mutiny to … well, actually, Rodney would probably never be organizing a mutiny in that circumstance, but he could imagine being angry. Except that Sheppard never resented being used as leverage in hostage situations, not even when that had involved being fed to a Wraith in fits and starts.

He decided that now was not the time to try to figure out what Sheppard’s issue was. They were under severe time constraints.

The next few hours passed in a blur of code. Billy and Joel didn’t even bother to say anything to him the next time they came, just left more of the stomach-unsettling protein. Sheppard didn’t say anything to him, either, which Rodney was grateful for, he needed to concentrate.

Except... he looked up, because timing was important to this part.

“Sheppard,” he said, low and urgent, not looking up from the console. But he could feel the startled brush of air as Sheppard looked up at him. “When was Mal planning on executing the plan? We’ve got to pick up Zoe, and the shields will only hold Billy and Joel out for a few minutes.

“McKay,” Sheppard said slowly, like he was an idiot, “your plan would have involved all three of you dying. It was a bad plan.”

“I’m _not_ an idiot,” Rodney snapped. “I said I was going to pick up some supplies from the cargo bay. What else could I have meant?”

Sheppard was silent for such a long time that Rodney gave up on being subtle and looked up. Sheppard’s lips were pressed tightly together. “We didn’t know that you were going to make it there in time.”

“So you decided... not to try to escape.”

Sheppard didn’t reply. And that was _it_.

“I cannot believe you!” Rodney exploded, setting down the tablet with a loud clunk. “What is your _problem_? I hit on you, I was wrong, I told you I was sorry, but somehow that’s such a big deal that it outweighs blowing up an entire solar system and makes you endanger other people’s lives--”

“My _problem_ , McKay,” Sheppard said, practically snarling, “is that nothing changes after you apologize.” He was so close that Rodney could feel his breath, hot and harsh on Rodney’s face like sandpaper. “You were sorry for being too damn arrogant to admit you were wrong on Doranda, then you turned around a month later and almost killed yourself by turning on another Ancient machine." The real hurt in Sheppard’s eyes made Rodney clamp his mouth shut on a response. “You said you were my friend. That’s obviously not true. Just stop lying to me--"

“I'm _not lying_ ,” Rodney snapped. This was a different kind of game-- one square for each way everything was Rodney’s fault-- but it was disturbingly familiar: everyone from his parents to the science department at Area 52 had played it. It shouldn’t get to him, after all this time, but he’d thought John was different. “Or at least I wasn't. I don't even know now."

Rodney ignored the way Sheppard inhaled at the words.

"First," he said, "you put me in the impossible position of having to scientifically prove my intentions, which, by the way, is completely ridiculous, and then you tell me my intentions don’t actually matter.” Rodney knew that none of this was going to be something he could take back, that now was still not the time to be having this fight, but he couldn’t stop, all of his anger and frustration and hurt and low blood sugar of the last several days was spilling out at once. “I don’t know if you noticed, but one of your mistakes endangered an entire galaxy.” He saw the familiar mulish edge setting into John’s jaw, and barged on. “I know what the tribunal said. I’ve also seen how many times your ridiculous leave-no-man-behind macho screwed us all over. I got lectured by the government as a twelve-year-old for knowing how to make weapons of mass destruction. You unleashed the Wraith on an entire galaxy, so don’t you dare lecture me on making bad judgment calls, _Colonel_.”

For a moment, he thought that John was actually going to punch him, and all of the anger began to trickle out of Rodney like water into a submerged jumper.

“You don’t have to worry about your judgment regarding me anymore,” Rodney said. “When we get back to Atlantis, I’ll transfer off your team.”

“We really are sorry,” said Billy from the doorway, “to interrupt.”

“It’s not finished,” Rodney said automatically, because it really wasn’t. He’d recreated the code that had originally frozen the replicators, but he hadn’t had time to write the workarounds, they’d be expecting the original code and the original code had only frozen the replicators for a matter of minutes.

To his horror, both of them stepped closer to him. “You forget that we understand your level of skill very well,” Joel said. “Your code has been prepared for several hours. Any more time and you would begin attempting to escape.”

“I’m telling you,” Rodney said, “it’s not done.”

“We require the Colonel’s navigation abilities,” Billy said, calmly and conversationally, “We do not require him to be able to walk.”

They both stood there, hands folded in front of them, smiling beatifically.

And this, _this_ was why Sheppard delaying was a stupid plan, the others in the mess had no idea, now, that something was coming, and he couldn’t put this off anymore. Rodney swallowed and looked at the incomplete code. “Fine,” he said, and began punching buttons on the console, praying he looked even more reluctant than he did. Praying the code would work. “But if it doesn’t work, don’t blame--”

Both replicators froze.

 _Yes_ , he thought. Then, to Sheppard, “Get Zoe.” He shoved the lifesigns detector into Sheppard’s hands. “I’ll handle the airlocks, I know the ship better, since you had me connect it to the cloak, which I might remind you...” He broke off. This wasn't the time. “Just go lock everyone into the mess.”

“Rodney,” Sheppard said.

“Not the time,” Rodney said, echoing his earlier thoughts. “Get to the bridge when you’re done, I don’t know how long I can keep them frozen.”

For a moment, it looked like Sheppard was going to object. Then he looked up at Rodney. “If I don’t make it up there in five minutes,” he said, “open the airlocks.”

This was ordinarily where Rodney would fill out the square for stupid macho bullshit, but it seemed like that time was past. “ _Go_ ,” he repeated.

Sheppard went.

\---

By the time Rodney got to the top of the ladder to the bridge, he had to lean on the railing to catch his breath.

Everything seemed to be happening both simultaneously and too slowly. He knelt near the controls set high up on the wall, feeling his back twinge. Then he settled down to wait for Sheppard.

Despite himself, Rodney felt himself beginning to go over contingency plans. It was always possible one of the Replicators would break free before the other, maybe there was something on the space station itself he could use to create a modulated EM pulse on a great enough scale...  
 _  
Four minutes.  
_  
John was a much faster runner than Rodney was. It shouldn’t have taken him even three minutes to grab Zoe and run up the ladder to the bridge. Unless he wasn’t alive, unless he’d been caught, this was some kind of horrible Schrödinger’s John.

If he had a few more minutes, he could probably modify the lifesigns detector to pinpoint where the Replicators were, bu he didn’t have time, none of them had...  
 _  
Five minutes. Six minutes._

He stared at his watch. It was impossible that the replicators wouldn’t be awake by now, or at least so statistically improbable it wasn’t even worth calculating. They were already on their way to the mess, if they made it there he wouldn’t have another shot at getting rid of them, the crew would all be doomed, not just Sheppard...

His hand dropped. No, it had never really been a consideration at all. If he opened the airlock, the last real conversation he would ever have with Sheppard would be an argument.

He sprinted down the ladder, grabbing his tablet from the pilot’s chair in the bridge. It might have been the stupidest thing he’d ever done, but he was apparently still incapable of letting Sheppard die from his stupid kamikaze heroics.

And as he reached the bottom of the ladder, his stomach lurched down to somewhere in the vicinity of his feet.

The corroded metal door of the mess was rigged shut, which was good, Rodney had to admire Kaylee’s resourcefulness. Joel and Billy stood in front of the door, which was really, really not good. Joel swivelled his head over to glance impassively at Rodney.

Billy didn’t bother, because he was dangling John Sheppard from one hand.

For a long, terrible moment, everything froze in place, slowing down like stasis. There was no plan anymore, no escape route, he didn’t have any weapons, they could track him down with the lifesigns detector, _he couldn’t see Sheppard’s chest moving_.

“What...” he knew he should run, but his Spidey doom-sense had taken over. Replicators were stupidly fast, he couldn’t outrun them, and there wasn’t a way off the ship anyway. He couldn’t move.

They regarded each other, Rodney still running through all the possible things he could say to them to stave off death, all of his contingency plans dissolving like an ice cube in hydrosulfuric acid.

Billy was the first to break the standoff, dropping Sheppard with a thud that reverberated like a scream through Rodney’s mind. “I regret that you were unwilling to assist us,” he said, and extended a hand towards Rodney.

He jerked back, but not fast enough. Billy’s hand closed around Rodney's neck, and he began to gag his way towards unconsciousness.

You would think that, with all the near-death experiences he’d had on the job, his life would stop flashing before his eyes every time, but it didn’t. Rodney saw his next-door neighbor, asking him to cat-sit, relaxed and wearing care-worn, comfortable sweats. When she wasn’t looking he sneaked glances down her tank-top. Katie, smiling at him shyly over the _Rodneyanivalosa_ cactus. Jeannie, crouched over and dipping her right hand in a pot of fingerpaint.

Sheppard. Grinning that stupid crinkly-eyed grin, making fun of him in the mess hall, clinking bottles with him on the pier. Toy racecars.

And, finally, irrationally, _It’s not fair. Wednesday can’t be more than a few hours away._

There was an unnaturally loud, hard crack, and then he couldn’t hear anything at all.

 

\---

 

And then, to his complete astonishment, the ringing in his ears began to subside.

He opened his eyes to see Billy and Joel sprawled on the floor. “Sorry,” Zoe said from beside him, holstering her gun. “Did I miss something?”

“...huh.” There were smoking holes in the center of both Billy’s and Joel’s chests. Then: “Sheppard!”

Rodney dropped his tablet with a clatter and dropped to Sheppard’s side. He’d never managed to learn much from Carson, or Jennifer (medicine was voodoo) but he’d have to be a complete moron to not know how to check...

... _a pulse_. It was there, faint, and now that he looked closer, Sheppard was breathing, shallow, harsh, the way he always did when he really didn’t want to be asleep but someone or something had made him.

“Get him a doctor.” he said to Zoe.

To Zoe’s credit, she didn’t even blink before sliding the door open.

“Zoe!” Kaylee said, stepping forward towards her. Then, “Ow.” She withdrew her hand hastily from where it had passed through the doorframe and shook it vigorously.

“Right, right.” Rodney crawled over to Billy’s body and slid a hand up his sleeve. A dial, it just figured. He twisted it. “Dr. Tam?”

Simon stepped out into the hallway and knelt by Sheppard’s side-- good, it had worked. “Just unconscious.” Anyone could have made that call, what had Simon gone to medical school for?

“And what do you plan to do about it?” he said. _How is he_ , he didn’t ask. _Will he be OK._

“Didn’t you say we couldn’t shoot them?” asked Jayne, following Simon into the hallway.

“Yes, yes, that’s not _important_ right now, I guess the protocols Chaya disabled were more extensive than I had--”

He cut off abruptly as the hole in Joel’s chest began to fill with silver liquid.

Mal didn’t hesitate. “Simon, get him to the infirmary. Everyone else, get those gorram _things_ ,” he said, exhaling hard on the word, “off my boat.”


	10. Chapter 10

Replicators didn’t weigh that much more than human beings-- not something most people ever needed to know, but the faster they worked, the less likely it was that Billy or Joel would pull a Niam. Today had been bad enough. Rodney wasn’t particularly wanting to end the day by being strangled.

After everything, it was strangely anticlimactic to watch the two replicators drifting away into space. The blue latex covering their hands didn’t crack or fall off, which was interesting, but Rodney had expected explosions, or something equally dramatic, after all the things that had gone wrong in his plan today.

The next few hours went by in a haze of leftover adrenaline and clean-up. Wash, when he woke up, complained about having been asleep through all the fun parts. Jayne complained that the cargo from the heist had gone bad.

John was withdrawn, but Rodney really hadn’t expected anything else.

Heading to the replicators’ ship was Mal’s idea-- he wanted there to be "some take from the whole mess," and the original cargo was worthless now. It was also an unexpected surprise, though one Rodney should have anticipated. The firewalls-- the ones that had completely broken Rodney’s ability to access the international network (called the ‘cortex,’ Simon had told him, as if it would be important in the next few days)-- were based manually out of the replicators' ship.

Removing the posters took a matter of minutes. Kaylee hugged him when she heard the news. Jayne looked at the wanted poster Rodney had taken down from the cortex and muttered to himself.

It wasn’t until dinner in the mess (apparently Rodney was the only one who still had an appetite) that he remembered why they’d come to this station in the first place.

He swallowed the bite of protein. "I don’t suppose you know where Tera kept the terraformer.” The coincidence of their names only just now occurred to him, inappropriately.

“Matter of fact,” Mal said, reluctantly, “she showed it us more than a few times. Could take you there this evening, you were willing.”

There was nothing Rodney wanted more than to have some hope of getting back to Atlantis and away from this whole mess, right now. But...

“What’s today?” Rodney asked. “Is it still Tuesday?”

Mal looked at him like he’d grown another head, and that head was growing another head, which was growing another head, like a narcissistic Escher drawing. “Yeeeees,” he said.

It was completely unscientific to be this superstitious... “No thanks,” he said. “We are waiting until tomorrow before we even try.”

\---

That night, Rodney almost wished he _had_ tried, because he couldn’t sleep.

He usually slept like a lead weight the day after a near-death experience, but tonight, unease about leaving the team was churning at his gut. Unease about Ronon, and Teyla, whether he’d see them, and, he'd admit it here if not outside the room, unease about leaving Sheppard behind. He replayed that afternoon’s argument over and over in his head.

Rodney even waited for River to show up for the next two hours—which was shameful, taking advantage of the crazy girl, but he really didn’t want to be alone with his thoughts tonight.

She never showed. Just his luck.

So he sat up, pulled out his laptop, and began typing. There was plenty of work to get done before he got back to Atlantis.

He was concentrating on a new plan for making the waste containers in Atlantis more efficient when his thoughts were drawn irretrievably back to the team. He reached into his newly-retrieved tac vest to grab a PowerBar and froze at the unexpected paper crinkle there.

It was the Bingo board. John’s Bingo board.

For a few moments, he contemplated leaving it there, trying to go back to his work as if nothing was wrong. But it was, and the board was there, and he wasn’t going to get back to sleep anyway.

He uncrumpled it from inside his vest and smoothed it out on the table as best he could.

Twenty-five squares. _Making stupid dangerous macho decisions. Leaning on things. Being Kirk. Wearing too much hair gel. Wearing black even when you’re off duty. Being too friendly with the natives. Getting shot at. Getting hit on by Wraith queens in frankly disturbing ways. Touching something you shouldn’t touch. Eating things that should not go together. Asking me to do something ridiculous. Telling me not to touch something and then touching it yourself. Talking about football. Getting tied up_ NOT LIKE THAT SHEPPARD. _Pretending you’re flying a ship in the middle of a conversation. Pretending you’re stupid. Naming someone inappropriate. Having an evil twin. Having a good twin. Stealing my popcorn. Acting twelve years old. Trying to rescue everyone even when you can’t. Trying to convince me to eat things that should not go together. Doing anything not on this list._

 _Saving all our lives._

Rodney threw the board in the trash.

He managed to let it stay there for about thirty seconds before fishing it out with a huff. Rodney still had the battered old copies of Debussy from when he used to think he could be a concert pianist (more emotion, his piano teacher had yelled), the brochure from the first time someone beat him in a science fair. He couldn't throw this away.

So he sat back down and, in a fit of maudlin, uncrumpled it again, crossed out the words “Sheppard Bingo,” and handwrote in “Things about John Sheppard I will miss.” It fit right back in the tac vest where it had been.

It didn’t help. He lay down on the bed and stared at the ceiling for a long time.

 

\---

 

It was enormous.

Rodney was used to the generous scope of Atlantis: high, clean lines, bright, geometric aquas and greens and burgundy, sunlight threaded through everything. But it was designed by the Ancients, who were as obsessed with efficiency as the Genii were with nuclear technology.

This was an entirely different kind of enormous. It looked like someone had gathered up a pile of all of the early-20th-century railway cars in Canada, along with parts of the tracks, and then an asteroid-sized cat had eaten everything and hacked it back up.

“That’s... awful poetic,” Kaylee said, rather dubiously, when he explained all this to her.

“Hmmm,” said Rodney, already engrossed in taking readings. “And where’s the power source?”

“Right behind the compressor coil,” she said, and then pointed when he just looked at her.

Mal was watching cautiously from the doorway. Sheppard stood as far across the room as humanly possible.

“You know,” Kaylee said, “folk that got your skills don’t tend to trouble with their earnings. If this don’t work, you could find a place here.”

“Thanks,” Rodney said curtly. "We'll see about that."

The diagnostic took hours and hours-- gradually, the crew started filtering out, Mal last of all, until it was only him and Sheppard left.

Green. Green. Green. Readings that could not, should not, be green. Not in this galaxy. "Sheppard," Rodney hissed, momentarily forgetting they were not on speaking terms. " _The terraformer is running on a small naquadah generator._ "

They were going home.

Which would have felt wonderful if he hadn't looked up to see Sheppard slipping from the room. “Sheppard." The Colonel’s back was military stiff and straight, and he still kept walking away.

Rodney hastily set down his tablet and followed the Colonel into the hallway. He couldn't let thing end like this.

“Sheppard, if we are going to work together in the same city, and you are the head of the military, I need to be able to speak with you.”

Sheppard slowly turned around, face stony. “Talk,” he said. Rodney hid his wince as best he could.

“Right. Well.” Now that he had the opportunity, the words he’d wanted to say were fleeing from him. He wasn't really sure what they were, anyway. _Don't go? I'm sorry?_ He wasn't really sorry, just regretful. “I don’t even want… what I was…” He was flushing, again, and made himself swallow to calm himself. “OK, that’s a little bit of a lie, you’re smart, and loyal, and you actually seem to understand what I’m going for most of the time, not to mention you’re incredibly hot—“

“McKay.“ Sheppard leaned back, and while ordinarily Rodney would tease him about really earning that Bingo square, there was no doubt in his mind that Sheppard was leaning to be further away from Rodney. “There a point to this?”

“I don’t know.” Rodney slumped his shoulders forward, feeling somehow more tired than he had any other time this day. “Right. Never mind, I’ll just… I’ll apply for a transfer Thursday.” He began to thread his way through the new cargo and towards the door.

“Rodney.”

When he turned back around, Sheppard was holding out his hand, face completely unreadable. “Give me back the bingo board.”

“What? No, I--”

“If you’re transferring off my team,” Sheppard said, loudly and clearly, “give me back the damn Bingo board.”

Numbly, and more than a little confused, Rodney fished in his tac vest for the crumpled-up paper and held it out. Taking it without another word, Sheppard turned around and stalked away into the cargo bay.

It was only then that Rodney remembered the note he’d left on the top.

 

\---

 

When it passed midnight and Rodney still hadn’t fallen asleep--Wilson was going to have a field day when he got back-- Rodney padded into the cargo bay. It was strange, to be here without anyone whatsoever threatening his life. He supposed they’d earned the trust now.

He hadn’t expected to see Mal leaning back against the jumper and staring at the ceiling, though.

It only took a moment for the man to register his presence. Mal shifted into an attentive, straighter position, then relaxed, to Rodney’s surprise.

“Heading back,” Mal said to the ceiling, “you said it’s risky?”

“Not really,” Rodney said. “Of course, there’s risk to anything, but...”

“What Kaylee said, it ain’t false. Could be useful, out here.” Mal glanced down at Rodney. “I could put in a word.”

It was a nice idea and a nice gesture, especially after the evening he’d had, but Rodney barely considered it for a moment. He couldn’t leave, any more than he’d been able to resist coming in the first place. Atlantis had spoiled him: any where else, even Earth, he’d get bored.

“Thanks,” Rodney said, bracing himself or an argument, “but...”

It didn’t come. “Not interested.” Mal studied him. “And why’s that?”

“Atlantis will fall apart without me,” he said, ignoring the tiny Sheppard in his head that was making fun of his ego. It was _true._

Mal pushed himself up from the jumper. “Suppose I can understand that.” He headed towards the door. “Pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

Rodney had to admit, the ridiculous way Mal had been staring at the rusty cargo bay, he probably did understand, at that.

 

\---

 

The naquadah generator was easy to patch into the control crystals, so by mid-morning, the crew was bidding him goodbye. Kaylee gave him a kiss on the cheek, which made him feel less strange than it probably should have. He hadn't thought of Jennifer for days, anyway. Mal clapped him on the back hard enough that it hurt. He flushed when Inara kissed his hand, even though he tried not to.

River, though, River was a surprise.

“Sorry,” she said, clearly and calmly, when he reached out to shake her hand, or something, since she’d been instrumental in so much of his time here. “It was very important I didn’t visit you two nights ago.” Then she leaned over and kissed him on the cheek in precisely the same place Kaylee had, then on the nose. Simon looked severely startled, then furious.

Which made Rodney gladder than he might otherwise have been to get onto the ship, because otherwise Simon might well have murdered him in cold blood.

It didn’t stop the pang when Sheppard still wouldn’t even look at him as the crew opened the bay doors, or when they jumped into hyperspace.

 

\---

 

The sight of Atlantis’s previous commander on the viewscreen was the first thing that startled him out of his brooding.

“Sam? What are _you_ doing here?”

“She’s here to help us rework the security system,” Woolsey-video explained dryly. “Two of our most senior staff members disappeared two weeks ago, along with all of their IDCs, self destruct codes, and a valuable piece of experimental technology. The IOA felt that additional measures should be in place.”

“What- oh,” Rodney said. “It wasn’t our fault! We were in another galaxy.”

“Far, far away,” Sheppard said, and if Rodney didn’t know better, he’d think that nothing had happened between him and Sheppard at all. He had had no idea that Sheppard was such a good actor when he needed to be.

Woolsey sighed. “I have a feeling that I’m going to need several hours for this debriefing. Welcome home, gentlemen.”

 

\---

 

The briefing took six days, because Woolsey wouldn’t believe _anything._

Woolsey eyed the Colonel with Rodney's special skeptical look for him. "And you’re certain the replicators can’t make their way back to this galaxy,” he asked, for the millionth time.

"Absolutely." The Colonel's voice was a flat deadpan.

"And neither can the ship crew to whom you’ve given extremely classified and extremely sensitive information.”

If anything, Colonel Sheppard looked more nonchalant. “Yep.”

“And there’s no possibility either of you were infected by nanites?”

“We’ve gone over this!” Rodney said irritably. “They couldn’t replicate. That’s why we’re still _alive_. Can we go now? I’m about a week overdue for a cup of coffee."

Woolsey sighed. “The IOA is really not going to like this.” He paused, and said, as if unwillingly, “And she really looked exactly like Dr. Keller?”

"What I don't understand," interrupted Sheppard, which was unusual, but Rodney didn’t want to answer the question for the fifty millionth time either, "is why replicators are so obsessed with living forever. I mean, they've been around for like fifty thousand years. That’s already practically forever. “

"Or, for that matter, how do we keep running into replicators in every galaxy?” Except he could answer that, he thought, still remembering Chaya’s blue energy weapon burning into his circuits.

"They’re like weeds,” Sheppard said.

“Or infomercials,” said Dr. Beckett, who had been called in to certify them as nanite-free despite everyone’s protests.

"Hey, that was nothing compared to the runaround Ba'al gave SG-1 a few years ago." Sam rubbed the back of her neck in what looked like pain. "At least these guys weren't clones."

"I beg your pardon?" said Dr. Beckett.

“By the way, McKay,” said Sheppard, and if he hadn’t known him as well as he did, Rodney wouldn’t have caught the too-casual tone of his voice.

“Yes?”

Sheppard frowned at him for several harrowing seconds (but he was _looking_ at Rodney again) before saying finally, “You should have at least three bingo squares for ‘failed experiment.’ See you at movie night on Saturday.”

“Does that mean you still want me on the team?” asked Rodney, before he could stop himself, because that was _not_ something Woolsey should be hearing.

Sheppard clapped a hand to his shoulder, though, and left it there a little bit too long, warmth lingering long after he removed it. Like an apology, or maybe like something else. “See you Saturday,” was all he said.

And that, Rodney decided with a rush of elation that seemed to encompass the entire multiverse, was enough for now.


End file.
